Nadine Alameh

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Standards Lie at the Heart of Data Integration

BY NADINE ALAMEH

CEO & President, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The pandemic has made us recognize the value of putting location at the center of all data analyses; people, cities, states, countries, and organizations are all asking questions related to ‘where’.Location-based analysis is now front and center.

In order to answer ‘where’, the geospatial industry has stepped up to offer solutions that provide decision-makers with timely, accurate, decision-ready information. This ranges from custom dashboards powered by standardized Application Programming Interface (APIs) to location-based/geographic analysis and insights enhanced by machine learning/artificial intelligence and underpinned by data coming from sources as broad as Earth Observation satellites in the sky to Internet of Things devices and social, health, and government authorities on the ground.

In many ways, COVID accelerated not only the mainstream uptake of geospatial technologies and principles, but also the wider recognition of the advantages of using location as an organizing principle when undertaking data integration and analysis. And, of course, at the heart of all this data integration is the recognition of the importance of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) information powered by standards.

The move to digital and Metaverse Indeed, the pandemic, its related social distancing/ isolation policies, and the large sections of the workforce pushed into remote work, have all accelerated the digital transformation of our social and working lives. And some of these new methods for online collaboration and engagement are here to stay. It’s not coincidental that talk of ‘the Metaverse’ bubbled up during the pandemic. The growing interest in the Metaverse is partly powered by a desire to improve today’s online social experiences by making them feel more immersive and more natural.

Just as location was central to understanding the pandemic, location is also central to the concept of the Metaverse. You can think of Metaverse ‘spaces’ (the Metaverse equivalent of websites) as massive databases of 3D semantic environments designed for efficient streaming. In many ways, the current hype about the Metaverse is an extension of what the geospatial industry has already been championing as city-or statewide Digital Twin technologies currently in use for optimized citizen services, increased citizen engagement, cutting-edge modeling and simulations, and more.

If a Metaverse is an extension of the real-world, then, obviously, it will be based on Space and time — a speciality of the geospatial community! Any activity in the Metaverse will require knowing where things are and how to get there. The geospatial industry is, therefore, in a great position to provide the necessary tools and accumulated knowledge needed to navigate, analyze, and make sense of the Metaverse. That same geospatial expertise will also be critical for linking and crossing between the virtual and real worlds.

As such, many of the OGC standards (3D, CityGML, Augmented Reality ML, and GeoPose to only name a few) will be critical to the Metaverse ecosystem — but more importantly critical to delivering a Metaverse that is open to all — a key value of OGC.

FAIR — Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable There’s never been a better time to be in ‘geospatial’ . Because of that, there are several technology trends that OGC is leading. At the most basic technical level,

there’s a shift towards web APIs as the dominant methodology for interacting with data — hence we’ve built the OGC API family of standards— based on the popular OpenAPI specification — to enable any developer to easily use location in their application or service. OGC is also investing in a ‘Cloud native’ approach to geospatial, where geospatial standards and workflows are designed with Cloud technologies as the primary use-case. These two developments alone are a huge shift for the industry.

Beyond that, the trend of interdisciplinary data integration continues to accelerate and hence there is a growing market for ‘Analysis Ready Data (ARD).’ From our perspective, this highlights the need for standards to enable, support, and document ARD, so that it’s not only Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) but also trusted. The need for FAIR and trusted data and processing also applies to geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) as well as the related field of linked data and the semantic web.

At the geospatial technology market level, we are experiencing an unprecedented expansion. Geospatial is emerging from its niche and becoming part of mainstream business. This presents several challenges and opportunities for OGC.

On the challenges side, industry — backed by higher than ever investment in geospatial - will likely respond with the development of commercial solutions geared toward quick returns on investment, rather than a deliberate commitment to foster longer-lasting interoperability. Simultaneously, technologies have partly emerged to a level that allows rapid integration, though this should not be mistaken for sustainable interoperability.

On the opportunities side, the abundance of new data and players — coupled with countless domains that could be disrupted by incorporating geospatial — underscore the need for trusted standards to accelerate data integration, and hence accelerate impact! This is driving the OGC community to accelerate the development and testing of our standards to remain in-step with technology changes. We have to be more collaborative than ever with developers, users and decision makers; we have to leverage our partnerships in various domains for accelerated targeted development and uptake; and we have to ensure that our standards are more modular.

Standards work is never ‘done’ Standards are the solution to data integration problems. By their very nature they support the interoperability of disparate systems, allowing data to pass between them with minimal effort. OGC believes that for standards to be successful, they also need to be open. Open Standards, such as those from OGC, are freely accessible, publicly available, vendor-neutral, and not constrained by license fees or patents. Open Standards reduce the barriers for anyone to access and share data.

Standards, however, are not the end goal. They are only the means! The goal is to solve the complex problems of our times, the problems that can only be solved if we are tackling them collectively. Take climate change for example. No single entity has all the data, systems, expertise, or processes. Interdisciplinary, collaborative approaches are absolutely critical when it comes to addressing a topic concerning such a complex and all-encompassing system as the climate. In many ways, climate change is THE use case for interoperability, and hence a great opportunity for geospatial to make a tremendous positive impact on the world.

As a geospatial community, we use our expertise in Space and time to connect, not just systems and technologies, but people and communities. We already have the expertise in data integration, diverse technologies, cross-disciplinary interoperability, and big data handling. That’s exactly why we are also passionate and committed to standards.

Because of that, the work of a standards body is never really ‘done’. OGC, of course, has achieved much in the 25+ years of its existence, but as long as technology evolves, so too must the related standards. We continue to standardize APIs and the models behind them, to lead on Cloud-native geospatial workflows and applications, to drive innovation in new domains, such as New Space, Digital Twins, the Metaverse and even planetary exploration. But OGC is about more than just standards: we are about problem solving. There’s no better time to be in geospatial!

Every decision we make depends on data integration and analysis. Today with geospatial becoming mainstream, those decisions are increasingly dependent on location and spatial correlations.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022