OGC DGGS Standards Working Group seeks public comment on new tasks of work added to its charter

The Discrete Global Grid Systems SWG will work with relevant working groups as necessary to embed linkages between DGGS and other standards in the OGC Standards baseline.

5 September 2019: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on new work tasks added to the charter of the Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) Standards Working Group (SWG).

The original goal of the DGGS SWG was to deliver an implementation standard. However, the fundamental and cross-cutting nature of DGGS resulted in the OGC DGGS being published as an OGC Abstract Specification that defines a conceptual model. In recognition of the nature of the relationship between DGGS and other OGC standards, much of the originally forecast effort to draft specific DGGS encoding standards can instead be accommodated by a mixture of extensions, changes, or best practice guides to/for existing OGC Standards. The DGGS SWG is therefore working with relevant OGC Working Groups as necessary to embed linkages between DGGS and other standards in the OGC Standards baseline. The new tasks proposed for the DGGS SWG address these linkages.

The goal of DGGS is to enable rapid assembly of spatial data without the difficulties of working with projected coordinate reference systems. DGGSs represent the Earth as hierarchical sequences of equal area tessellations, each with global coverage and with progressively finer spatial resolution. Individual observations can be assigned to a cell corresponding to both the position and size of the phenomenon being observed - meaning that the resolution and precision of the data capture is inherently part of the stored data, and not something that needs to be explained in metadata - and potentially overlooked. 

Further, DGGS come with a standard set of functional algorithms that enable rapid data analysis of very large numbers of cells and, by their very nature, are well suited to parallel processing applications at multiple spatial resolutions - a boon for big data processing.

The new tasks are viewable in section 4.2 of the draft Discrete Global Grid Systems Standards Working Group Charter, which is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal. Comments are due by 26th September, 2019 and should be submitted via the method outlined on the Discrete Global Grid Systems Standards Working Group Charter request page.

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.

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