Press release

OGC Calls for Participation in its Next Major Innovation Testbed (Testbed-17); Funding Available for Participants

Draft specifications developed in Testbeds eventually move into the OGC Standards Program, where they are reviewed, revised, and potentially approved as new international open standards that can reach millions of individuals.Prototype solutions will implement existing OGC standards as well as new prototype interface and encoding specifications introduced or developed in Testbed-17.Specifications may become official, member approved OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.Further information about Testbed-17 is also available on the OGC Testbed-17 webpage.OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels.

Gain access to funding to further advance Federated Cloud Analytics, new Web APIs, and other future location technologies

Banner announcing OGC Testbed 17 Call for Participation

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites interested organizations to respond to a Call for Participation (CFP) for OGC's Testbed-17 Innovation Initiative, a collaborative effort to rapidly prototype, design, develop and test solutions to location-related problems. Responses are due January 24, 2021.

The outcomes of Testbed-17 will shape the future of geospatial software architectures, processing, and data handling. Testbed sponsors are supporting this vision with cost-sharing funds to partially offset the costs associated with development, engineering, and demonstration of these outcomes. This offers selected participants a unique opportunity to recoup a portion of their initiative expenses.

As an OGC Innovation Program activity, Testbeds emphasize the evaluation of what should be in a specification, how the specification should act, and how specification-based software should respond. Draft specifications developed in Testbeds eventually move into the OGC Standards Program, where they are reviewed, revised, and potentially approved as new international open standards that can reach millions of individuals.

Testbed-17 will undertake research & development (R&D) in real-world environments to advance technologies in the following areas:

  • Thread 1: Advanced Sensor Integration (ASI)
    • Sensor Integration
    • Moving Features from Full Motion Imagery
    • OGC API-Aviation
  • Thread 2: Security, Clouds, and Model Driven Standards (SCM)
    • Data Centric Security Across OGC APIs and Federated Clouds
    • Federated Cloud Analytics
    • Model Driven Standards
    • COG & Zarr: Specification & Evaluation
  • Thread 3: Interoperability through APIs (ITA)
    • Data Centric Security
    • Federated Security
    • GeoPackage
    • OpenAPI

Organizations selected to participate in Testbed-17 will develop prototype solutions based on the sponsors' use cases, requirements, and scenarios that are described in detail in the Testbed-17 CFP. Prototype solutions will implement existing OGC standards as well as new prototype interface and encoding specifications introduced or developed in Testbed-17. Specifications may become official, member approved OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.

OGC Testbeds are part of OGC's Innovation Program, a collaborative, agile, and hands-on prototyping and engineering environment where sponsors and OGC members come together to address location interoperability challenges while validating international open standards.

Organizations interested in learning more about, or participating in, Testbed-17 can contact the OGC Innovation Program team using this contact form. Further information about Testbed-17 is also available on the OGC Testbed-17 webpage.

The Testbed-17 Call For Participation is available in HTML and PDF formats. Submissions are due January 24, 2021, and the project will officially start with a kick-off meeting scheduled for early April, 2021. Participation is open only to OGC Members. Proposals from non-members can be submitted with a completed application for OGC membership, or a letter of intent that is submitted prior to, or with their proposal.

About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
OGC's member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members' use cases.
OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating a sustainable future for us, our children, and future generations.
Visit ogc.org for more info on our work.