OGC Approves Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) Community Standard

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has formally incorporated the Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) version 1.0.0 into its Standards Baseline as a Community Standard, marking an important step toward consistent and interoperable indoor mapping worldwide. The adoption of IMDF allows developers, organizations, and public agencies to create indoor mapping applications and services that rely on a shared, highly detailed spatial data framework usable across websites, mobile platforms, and operating systems.

Indoor mapping plays an increasingly vital role in navigation and operational planning within complex environments such as airports, hospitals, shopping centers, campuses, and government facilities. By providing a standardized data structure for describing indoor spaces, IMDF enables organizations to maintain a single authoritative dataset that can be styled or displayed differently by various applications while preserving the accuracy of the underlying information. This capability supports numerous use cases, including guiding visitors through large venues, improving patient navigation within medical facilities, and helping emergency responders access precise indoor location information during critical incidents.

The IMDF specification was originally developed by Apple to support indoor mapping functionality in Apple Maps, allowing users to locate services, points of interest, and amenities inside buildings worldwide. Recognizing its broad adoption and maturity, several organizations—including Apple, Autodesk, Esri, Google, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT), Ordnance Survey, and Safe Software—submitted the format to OGC for endorsement as a Community Standard.

As part of the OGC Standards Baseline, IMDF is now positioned for deeper integration with other geospatial standards, strengthening interoperability between indoor and outdoor mapping systems and supporting seamless navigation experiences across different spatial environments. The format is designed to be lightweight, mobile-ready, human-readable, and extensible, allowing it to accommodate a wide variety of indoor mapping scenarios while supporting time-aware data updates and future technological enhancements.

OGC Community Standards represent specifications that have already achieved widespread industry use prior to formal adoption by the consortium. Through membership approval, these mature standards are incorporated into the official baseline, making them openly available for implementation at no cost and encouraging global adoption.

The Open Geospatial Consortium is an international collaborative community of organizations from government, industry, academia, and research sectors dedicated to advancing open geospatial standards. Through consensus-driven development processes and innovation initiatives, OGC works to ensure that location-based data and services remain interoperable, accessible, and reusable, supporting better decision-making and enabling the continued growth of geospatial technologies worldwide.