OGC to create Agriculture Information Model Standards Working Group; Public Comment Sought on Draft Charter

New SWG will develop an Agriculture Information Model that will provide a common language for agriculture applications to harmonize and improve data and metadata exchange.

3 February 2023: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is looking to create an Agriculture Information Model Standards Working Group (AIM SWG). Public comment is sought on its draft charter. Comments are due by February 23, 2023.

The purpose of the AIM SWG is to develop, publish and maintain an Agriculture Information Model (AIM) to support interoperability of information in the Agriculture Domain, with emphasis on the re-use of generic OGC standards as appropriate.

AIM will provide a common language for agriculture applications to harmonize and improve data and metadata exchange by defining the required data elements, including concepts, properties, and relationships relevant to agriculture applications, as well as their associated semantics/meaning for information exchange. 

AIM will be a multi-tier and modular domain model that aligns, profiles, and/or extends well known agriculture-related and generic ontologies, including those published by OGC. Publishing such a domain model as a modular ontology is a new and innovative approach. As such, the SWG will identify best practices for this approach, as well as develop a series of complementary models.

AIM will be published as both human and implementation-ready machine-actionable resources. Machine-actionable resources include the canonical ontology representation of the AIM in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as well as other related artifacts to support implementation.

The SWG will develop implementations of the AIM model compatible with OGC APIs, including:

• JSON schemas supported by OGC APIs;
• JSON-LD contexts allowing identification and validation of AIM-compliant data; and
• SHACL shapes that enable the validation of data against AIM semantics.

In addition, other forms may be derived or supplied to support the reuse of the AIM model according to requirements identified by the SWG. For example:

• UML representation of the AIM conceptual model;
• UML representation of one or more logical models for AIM implementation; and
• Formal profiles for implementation of AIM using GeoJSON, FG-JSON, CoverageJSON, and other relevant generic schemas.

In line with OGC policies and FAIR principles, the AIM will be published using persistent and resolvable URI identifiers, consistent with OGC Naming Authority processes for publishing semantic resources.

The OGC Agriculture Information Model will be discussed during the next OGC Member Meeting Agriculture DWG session, online or in-person in Frascati, Italy, on February 20, 2023. The Agriculture DWG meeting, and many other sessions, are open to the public. Register today at meet.ogc.org.

The draft charter for the Agriculture Information Model Standards Working Group is available for review and comment on the OGC Agriculture DWG GitHub Repo. Comments are due by February 23, 2023 and should be submitted via the method outlined on the Agriculture Information Model Standards Working Group draft charter public comment request page.

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a collective problem-solving community of more than 550 experts representing industry, government, research and academia, collaborating to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

The global OGC Community engages in a mix of activities related to location-based technologies: developing consensus-based open standards and best-practices; collaborating on problem solving in agile innovation initiatives; participating in member meetings, events, and workshops; and more.

OGC's unique standards development process moves at the pace of innovation, with constant input from technology forecasting, practical prototyping, real-world testing, and community engagement.

OGC bridges disparate sectors, domains, and technology trends, and encourages the cross-pollination of ideas between different communities of practice to improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating an inclusive and sustainable future.

Visit ogc.org for more info on our work.