OGC Seeks Public Comment on New Abstract Specification Topic for DGGS

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is requesting public comment on its Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) Abstract Specification Topic.

DGGS enable rapid integration of spatial data without the difficulties of working with legacy coordinate systems, particularly projected coordinates such as Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM). DGGSs represent the Earth as a hierarchy of equal area cells with progressively finer spatial resolution. Individual observations can be assigned to a cell corresponding to both the position and size (or uncertainty) of the phenomenon being observed. DGGSs provide significant benefits when encoding, scaling, threading, streaming, combining, and analysing spatial data.

DGGSs are characterized by the properties of their cell structure, geo-encoding, indexing strategy, and associated mathematical functions. The OGC DGGS Abstract Specification supports the specification of standardized DGGS infrastructures that enable the integrated analysis of very large, multi-source, multi-resolution, multi-dimensional, distributed geospatial data. Interoperability between OGC DGGS implementations is anticipated through implementation standards, and extension interface encodings of OGC Web Services.

OGC Abstract Specifications provide a conceptual foundation for the development of implementation standards. The intention of OGC’s DGGS Abstract Specification is to provide the geomatics and decision-making community with a formal document with which DGGS can be recognized, designed, built and used. The Abstract Specification defines the framework components that make up a compliant DGGS and the variability within those components.

The DGGS standard is available for public review and comment at portal.opengeospatial.org/files/72475. Comments are due by 5 April 2017 and should be submitted to requests@lists.opengeospatial.org.