OGC Requests Public Comment on Features and Geometries JSON – Part 1: Core Standard

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) requests public comment on the OGC Features and Geometries JSON – Part 1: Core candidate Standard. Comments are due by June 24, 2024.

GeoJSON is a very popular encoding for feature data. GeoJSON is widely supported, including in most deployments of APIs implementing the OGC API Features Standard. However, GeoJSON has intentional restrictions that prevent or limit its use in certain geospatial application contexts. For example, GeoJSON is restricted to WGS 84 coordinates, does not support volumetric geometries, and has no concept of classifying features according to their type.

OGC Features and Geometries JSON (JSON-FG) is a proposal for GeoJSON extensions that provide standard ways to support such requirements. The goal is to focus on capabilities that may require some geospatial expertise, but that are useful for many. Edge cases are considered out-of-scope of JSON-FG.

The JSON-FG Standard specifies the following minimal extensions to the GeoJSON format:

• The ability to use Coordinate Reference Systems (CRSs) other than WGS 84 (OGC:CRS84);
• The ability to use non-Euclidean metrics, in particular ellipsoidal metrics;
• Support for solids and prisms as geometry types;
• The ability to encode temporal characteristics of a feature; and
• The ability to declare the type and the schema of a feature.

Since JSON-FG specifies extensions to GeoJSON that conform to the GeoJSON standard, valid JSON-FG features or feature collections are also valid GeoJSON features or feature collections.

OGC invites organizations and developers that have a need for the extensions specified by JSON-FG to implement and test the extensions. Please submit feedback in the GitHub repository of the specification. Are these extensions useful for your use cases? Are they simple enough to implement?

Uptake in implementations and sufficient feedback from implementation experience will be a prerequisite for this specification to eventually progress towards an OGC Standard.

OGC Members interested in staying up to date on the progress of this standard, or contributing to its development, are encouraged to join the Features and Geometries JSON Standards Working Group via the OGC Portal. Non-OGC members who would like to know more about participating in this SWG are encouraged to contact the OGC Standards Program.

OGC invites organizations and developers that have a need for the extensions specified by JSON-FG to implement and test the extensions. The candidate OGC Features and Geometries JSON – Part 1: Core Standard (21-045) (.HTML) is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal. Comments are due by June 24, 2024, and should be submitted as issues in the OGC Features and Geometries JSON GitHub repository.