FreeGIS.net, INSPIRE, Open Source Software and OGC standards

FreeGIS.net, INSPIRE, Open Source
Software and OGC standards
Workshop: How Open Source / Free Software and Open
Standards complement each other in an SDI environment
SFScon 13 – Free Software Conference
Bolzano, ITALY – 15. November 2013

Arnulf Christl
metaspatial
arnulf.christl@metaspatial.net
http://www.metaspatial.net

Dipl.-Geogr. Athina Trakas
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
Director European Services
atrakas@opengeospatial.org
1
http://www.opengeospatial.org

Who is Athina ?
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/organization/staff/atrakas
Athina works in the field of GIS since 1998 after finishing university with a diploma in
Geography.
She worked with CCGIS and WhereGroup being responsible for Business Development
and International Outreach for Free and Open Source GIS and standards.
Since 2009 she is OGC's Director for European Services. Athina is contact person for
OGC in Europe, responsible for the Consortiums OGC activities and networking, like
planning and managing of OGC recruitment, connecting with European stakeholder
organisations and members.
Athina is charter member of OSGeo since 2008.
Additionally she is charter member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo)
since 2008.

© 2013 Open Geospatial Consortium – 2

Introducing Arnulf Christl
Arnulf Christl is an Open Source, Open Standards
and Open Data advocate and promotes innovation
at a sustainable pace.
●

Metaspatial Systems Architect

●

Founder of the metaspatial Institute

●

Co-founder and Emeritus President of OSGeo

●

OGC Architecture Board Member

●

OpenStreetMap Advocate


The workshop is about ...



… open standards



… open source GIS software



… your questions


The OGC
http://www.opengeospatial.org/

http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/programs


How is an OGC standard developed?
http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/process

→ Issue / problem



→ Issue / problem



→ Issue / problem

→ Tell the relevant working group
→ Send email to the TCmailing list
→ Talk to OGC members and/or staff

Communicate!


Positive Feedback / Interest
Initiate an Interoperability
Program initiative:
Special prerequirements
  needed
●

Results: e.g. an Engineering
  Report
●

With enough interest /
  support by OGC members,
  a working group can be
  established
●

Start a Domain Working
Group (DWG):
Special prerequirements
  needed (a certain number of
  OGC members, email to the
  Technical Committee etc.)
●

Results: charter, mailing list,
  Wiki, timeframe (e.g. for
  teleconferences, meetings,
  expected results etc.)
●



Results achieved in the DWG/SWG may be:
●

●

A Discussion Paper or a Candidate Standard document is being
developed
It will be reviewed by the OGC Architecture Board (OAB) and the
Technical Committee (TC).

→ Once an OGC document is published (by vote of the
SWG), everyone who is interested can comment on it within a
given period of time (usually 30 days):
●

●

●

Requests to the document need to be answered by the relevant SWG
Changes and comments need to be included (SWG works the
comments)
SWG votes to release to the TC for an adoption vote, vote happens
→ New approved standard published

OGC Domain & Standards Working Groups
Standards Program (SP):
(i) Domain Working Groups: Forum for discussion and documentation of
interoperability requirements for a given information or user community,
Informal presentations and discussions about the market use of adopted
OGC Standards (http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/wg)
(ii) Standards Working Groups: Edit and approve a candidate standard
for public comment, Consider official Change Request Proposals to an
existing OGC Standard and make changes to the standard as necessary
(http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/swg)


OGC

Open Geospatial Consortium, 2011 – Making Location Count...

OGC MetOceans DWG: example for cooperation
(Cross Domain Modeling)

The OGC MetOcean
DWG provides the
forum for development
of a harmonized data
model for meteorology.
Main stakeholders in
this activity comprise:
WMO, INSPIRE (TWG
Atmospheric Conditions &
Meteorologica Features),

aviation and earth
science community.
Slides from presentation given
by Jeremy Tandy at the Toulouse
OGC TC Meeting (Sept. 2010)


INSPIRE technical architecture
INSPIRE Discovery service:

– OGC Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW)
– Query language: OGC Filter Encoding
INSPIRE View service:

– ISO 19128 : WMS (Web Map Service) 1.3 (extensions)
INSPIRE Download service:

– Pre-defined data sets => standard Internet protocols (like FTP)
– Direct access data with queries
– Web Feature Service: OGC WFS / ISO 19142
– Filter Encoding: OGC Filter Encoding / ISO 19143
INSPIRE Coordinate Transformation service:

– An Application Profile of the Web Processing service (WPS) based on

OGC

the Web Coordinate Transformation Service (WCTS)
Open Geospatial Consortium, 2011 – Making Location Count...

INSPIRE and OGC Standards
→ Market Report on open Standards in INPSIRE provide examples
activities underway around INSPIRE based on international standards,
highlight overlap between OGC and ISO standards (e.g. ISO 19115)
This purpose of this special OGC market report is to provide INSPIRE stakeholders with an overview of
OGC, CEN and ISO standards in INSPIRE and to provide clarification of the Implementing Rules with
respect to standards. The report highlights the fact that INSPIRE has some elements that are legally
binding and other elements that are not. INSPIRE Implementing Rules are legally binding, but they do
not specify particular standards or technologies. Technical Guidance documents accompanying the
Implementing Rules provide the implementation details but they are not legally binding documents.
Technical Guidance documents reference OGC, ISO and other standards.

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/marketreport/inspire


OGC and INSPIRE
• We encourage members and the public to make suggestions for
improving OGC standards, or for developing alternatives to better
fit users’ application requirements, including to support INSPIRE.
• Please note: existence of INSPIRE’s due date does not by itself
speed up processing feature requests and change requests within
OGC. It is up to the submitter to champion the requests or find
proxies to champion the changes!
– If you don’t shepherd your request, who will?
– And if someone else does, are you sure they are looking out for your
interests?


OGC & the FreeGIS.net – multilingual
FreeGIS.net enables public administrations to effectively
publish geo information by providing Free Software
applications, open data licenses and open standards
https://freegis.net/


Technical Example
This technical example will show how the OGC standard needs to be extended in
order to address the requirements of the INSPIRE regulation.
●

OGC standard

●

INSPIRE View Service requirements

●

MapServer technical implementation

●

FreeGIS environment and collaborative approach:
●

PostGIS

●

MapServer

●

GisClient

●

FreeGIS.net Viewer

●

PyWPS

●

OpenLayers

The OGC WMS Standard
The OGC WMS Standard is used to disseminate map
data. TO acces a service first the Online Resource URL
must be made available. This URL is the parameterized
with one of the two core calls:
– GetCapabilities
– GetMap

They will return a map image for a specified coordinate
area and selected map layers.
There are also some optional additional calls to retrieve a
legend (GetLegendGraphic) or the metadata of the layer
or the full service...
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wms


OGC WMS Capabilities Document
GetCapabilities
...will return an XML document containing all the information need to make an
educated GetMap request.

Example:
http://metaspatial.net/cgi-bin/ogc-wms.xml?REQUEST=GetCapabilities&...


OGC WMS GetMap Request
GetMap
...will return an map image
Example: http://metaspatial.net/cgi-bin/ogc-wms.xml?REQUEST=GetMap&...
http://metaspatial.net/cgi-bin/ogc-wms.xml?
VERSION=1.3.0&
REQUEST=GetMap&
SERVICE=WMS&
LAYERS=DTM,Overview,Raster_250K,Topography,n
ationalparks,Infrastructure,Places&
STYLES=,,,,,,&
CRS=EPSG:27700&
BBOX=424735.97883597884,96026.98412698413,46
7064.02116402116,127773.01587301587&
WIDTH=400&
HEIGHT=300&
FORMAT=image/png&
BGCOLOR=0xffffff&
TRANSPARENT=TRUE&
EXCEPTIONS=XML


Changes to OGC WMS...
Sometimes new requirements will arise, for example to
satisfy INSPIRE regulations. As a quick fix these can be
implemented in Open Source software. In the long run
they should become part of the regular OGC WMS
standard by requesting a change from the OGC working
group.


Submitting a Change Request to the OGC
●

●

All technical development underlies a lot of changes.
Standards rely heavily on dependencies. Instead of
reinventing the wheel again and again, standards
reference other standards. Therefore any change in a
standard is bound to disrupt other development,
especially in the underlying layers. Still, sometimes there
is a need for changes, to make these known they have to
be submitted as a Change Request. This section will
highlight the steps involved.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o2IjqNsnzWiTX_ECnnIMK52tQO3GQN2hX
M8rllGXa9A/edit#


Collaboration and Cooperation
http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/newsletters/201004/#C5
The CEN/TC 287 workshop on best practice for National Spatial Data Infrastructures (NSDIs) convened in Saint-Denis, Paris,
France on 1 March 2010. This provided an excellent venue and opportunity for organizational representatives of

CEN/TC 287, ISO/TC 211 and OGC to discuss ways in which coordination between
these standards bodies can be improved to better address European and international standards requirements.
Discussions also included representatives from participating user communities, and led to general agreement for

closer,

more formal cooperation between OGC and CEN/TC 287, as well as agreement to consider continued
improvements in OGC and ISO/TC 211 coordination. Emphasis was also placed on the testing of standards for
viability, fulfillment of purpose, ease of implementation and improvements in interoperability. The mantra "test early, test
often" was reflective of this need.
These three organizations will be cooperatively exploring the

adoption of a common Change

Request / Requirements registry, and will be examining ways in which adopted standards schema can
be managed more effectively and efficiently across these organizations. The requirements process is also an effort to

make the standards process more transparent and more responsive to
community needs. All requirements and change requests will be gathered in an open forum visible to the
public. All parties agreed that continued exploration of process improvements would be valuable to the community, with
particular focus on improved coordination, reduction in duplication of effort, and streamlining of
standards coordination processes.


The Role of Open Source
software for OGC Standards
development

Free & Open Source Software and Standards

●

Best practices

●

Prototype development

●

Reference Implementations


How does an Open Source
Project Work?

Participation, Collaboration and Funding

●

How can you participate actively in an Open Source project?

●

What does "Empowerment of the user" mean?

●

How are Open Source Projects funded?


OSGeo Incubation

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation has setup a rigorous quality
assessment. Any project wishing to become endorsed by OSGeo has
to go through this process and prove that it follows the best practices
laid out by OSGeo. This quality assurance ensures that projects are
managed and run in a sustainable way and that users can rely on it's
longevity.

Find more information on the Web at:
http://www.osgeo.org/incubator


FreeGIS.net
FreeGIS.net enables public administrations
to effectively publish geo information by
providing Free Software applications, open
data licenses and open standards
https://freegis.net/

Thank you for your
attention!
Grazie!
Vielen Dank!

Athina Trakas
Director European Service, OGC
eMail: atrakas@opengeospatial.org
web: http://www.opengeospatial.org

Arnulf Christl
Metaspatial
arnulf.christl@metaspatial.net
http://www.metaspatial.net

FreeGIS.net, INSPIRE, Open Source Software and OGC standards

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