OGC Membership approves Version 2.0 of the OGC 2D Tile Matrix Set and Tile Set Metadata Specification as official OGC Standard
V2 supports “tile set metadata” that can be used to describe common properties of a tile set, the layers & styles used to produce the tile set, and the limits of the tile matrix.
29 September 2022: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that the OGC Membership has approved Version 2.0 of the OGC Two Dimensional Tile Matrix Set and Tile Set Metadata Specification as an official OGC Standard.
The OGC Two Dimensional Tile Matrix Set and Tile Set Metadata (2D TMS) Standard defines the rules and requirements for a tile matrix set as a way to index space based on a set of regular grids. The data model specified in this standard was initially part of the OGC’s Web Map Tile Service Standard (WMTS) and was separated out to be a standalone specification in order to support reusability in other standards that needed a tiling scheme.
This revision of the 2D TMS standard defines a new data structure – called “tile set metadata” – that can be used to describe a particular set of tiles. Tile set metadata describes common properties of a tile set, the layers & styles used to produce the tile set, and the limits of the tile matrix with actual data and common metadata such as abstract, owner, author, etc. The standard specifies Extensible Markup Language (XML) and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) encodings for tile matrix sets and tile matrix set metadata, and provides practical examples of tile matrix sets both for common global projections and for specific regions. The standard also supports the description of tile matrix set limits, links to the tile matrix set, details of the original data represented by the tile set, and a point of origin for the tile set.
This revision of the 2D TMS standard also contains an informative annex for common definitions of tile matrix sets and another informative annex for well-known scale sets. Global identifiers for the tile matrix sets and well-known scale sets defined in these annexes are registered with the OGC Naming Authority and listed in dedicated registers on the OGC Definitions Server. Organizations that specify definitions of new tile matrix sets and well-known scale sets are invited to submit their definitions for registration by posting an Issue to the OGC Naming Authority GitHub repository.
Since the release of the initial version of this standard, the data model has been adopted by other standards such as the OGC GeoPackage and OGC CDB Standards, as well as the OGC API - Tiles candidate standard. The 2D TMS concept has therefore been successfully applied to a variety of use cases, from storage to visualization.
As with any OGC Standard, Version 2.0 of the OGC Two Dimensional Tile Matrix Set and Tile Set Metadata is free to download and implement. Interested parties can view and download the standard from the OGC Two Dimensional Tile Matrix Set webpage on ogc.org.
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