Open Geospatial Consortium
Submission Date: 2014-09-18
Approval Date: 2014-12-04
Publication Date: 2015-01-22
External identifier of this OGC® document: http://www.opengis.net/doc/WP/stds-sustainable-devel
Internal reference number of this OGC® document:

14-095

Category: OGC® White Paper
Editor: Lance McKee

OGC Information Technology Standards for Sustainable
Development

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium
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This document is not an OGC Standard. This document is an OGC White Paper and istherefore not an official position of the OGC membership. It is distributed for review andcomment. It is subject to change without notice and may not be referred to as an OGC
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English1

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

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Contents	
  1.	
   Introduction – Data communication for sustainable development .............................. 6	
  2.	
   What needs to be measured and communicated for sustainable development? .......... 8	
  3.	
   Environmental Accounting needs indices based on trusted data ............................... 11	
  4.	
   Citizen Science and data quality ................................................................................ 12	
  5.	
   Open Data and sustainable development ................................................................... 14	
  6.	
   Keeping up with rapidly evolving IT ......................................................................... 15	
  7.	
   Semantic standards and technical standards .............................................................. 19	
  7.1	
   Domain semantics necessitate semantic standards .............................................. 20	
  7.2	
   Technical standards hitch environmental standards to IT innovations ................ 21	
  8.	
   GML and SWE profiles and application schemas – Basis for domain-specificenvironmental encoding standards .................................................................................... 23	
  9.	
   GEO and the GEOSS AIP.......................................................................................... 24	
  10.	
   Examples of domain standards for the Age of the Environment ............................. 25	
  10.1	
   WaterML 2.0 – hydrology ................................................................................. 25	
  10.2	
   WXXM – weather .............................................................................................. 26	
  10.3	
   netCDF – climate and oceans ............................................................................ 26	
  10.4	
   GeoSciML – geology ......................................................................................... 27	
  10.5	
   PipelineML SWG – pipeline management ........................................................ 28	
  10.6	
   Other environmental domains in the OGC ........................................................ 29	
  11.	
   A call for leadership ................................................................................................ 30	
  12.	
   References ................................................................................................................ 31	
  3

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumi.

Abstract
Sustainable development, "meeting the needs of the present without compromising theability of future generations to meet their own needs,1" will be accomplished bybalancing social, economic and environmental objectives. In this paper the authors
explain that rigorous standards for communicating environmental data are absolutely
essential to enable social and economic progress in the Age of the Environment2 – theAnthropocene Epoch3 – in which humanity's expanding footprint has become the maincause of change in the planet's geology, water bodies, atmosphere and biosphere. The
authors argue for a concerted and ongoing global effort to 1) define data communicationand system interoperability requirements for environmental science, business and policy,
and then 2) develop and implement consensus-derived, free and open environmental
Information Technology (IT) standards that meet those requirements and that co-evolvewith the larger IT standards framework and advances in IT.

ii.

Keywords
ogcdoc, OGC document, sustainable development, open standards, IT standards for theenvironment, green IT, Anthropocene, standards, WaterML 2.0, OGC standardsiii.

Preface

One of Green IT's most important enablers – open standards – is seldom discussed. The authors
propose an agenda for standards research, development and implementation to underpin
communication of spatial data in support of sustainable development.

This document was written and reviewed by staff and members of the OGC to 1) describe
the work of the OGC as it relates to sustainable development and 2) call for collaboration
across a broad spectrum of sustainable development stakeholders to carry this work to thenext level.
The paper includes overviews of existing standards, current work on new standards,
technology trends affecting environmental standards, and descriptions of a few of thestandards that are needed but do not yet exist. The authors argue for the development anduse of domain-specific but technically interrelated IT standards for communication anddata integration within and between domains that focus on the environment. These
domains include the Earth sciences as well as the environmental response andmanagement domains such as emissions monitoring, offsetting, trading, taxing andregulating; physical infrastructure monitoring; public health; embedded energy
tracking/reduction, disaster response; etc.
1

World Commission on Environment and Development’s (the Brundtland Commission) report, "Our
Common Future," (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)

2

Edward O. Wilson, “On the Age of the Environment,” Foreign Policy, no. 119 (Summer 2000), p. 34.

3

See http://www.anthropocene.info/en/anthropocene. This website is a collaborative project between
researchers and communicators from some of the leading scientific research institutions on global
sustainability.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumEnvironmental data is spatial data, that is, data describing features and phenomena andtheir locations relative to Earth coordinate reference systems. It is important to keep inmind, however, that "maps" and even GIS (geographic information systems) do not
capture the full potential of digital environmental data. To secure humanity's future weneed to put data describing natural and built environments – micro, meso and macro,indoor and outdoor – into the broader Web sphere, and we need consensus-derived, open,
international encoding and interface standards and best practices so producers and usersof that data can benefit from the extraordinary and rapidly advancing capabilities of IT.
The Earth is a "flux coupler", simultaneously coupling complex dynamic Earth systemprocesses of many kinds. The ability to introduce outputs from one Earth system model
as inputs into another Earth system model improves our ability to model these complex
interlinked and dynamic systems.4 The nature of digital technology and theinterrelatedness of Earth systems require that geoscience and environmental management
domains use data encodings and geoprocessing software interfaces that are designed to be
useful in holistic Earth system modeling, cross-disciplinary studies and longitudinalstudies. Data provenance, quality, archival, semantics are important, as are the evolving
trends in IT and these trends impacts on workflows.
The authors describe progress in the area of spatial IT standards and call for a concerted
effort by academia, research funding agencies, NGOs, government and industry to build
the required open standards framework. Analysis of data communication in current
environmental workflows will yield specific technical requirements, and the authors callfor funding of such analysis so that it may begin. The authors urge and anticipate future
work and leadership in bringing together international partners who can build bridges
connecting domain subgroups and connecting domains so that they may begin building
common purpose, common understandings, and then standard interfaces, encodings andbest practices.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subjectof patent rights. The Open Geospatial Consortium shall not be held responsible for identifying
any or all such patent rights.
Recipients of this document are requested to submit, with their comments, notification of any
relevant patent claims or other intellectual property rights of which they may be aware that might
be infringed by any implementation of the standard set forth in this document, and to provide
supporting documentation.

iv.

Submitting organizations
The following organizations submitted this Document to the Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC):

4Interfaces implementing the OGC Open Modelling Interface Version 2 (OpenMI) Interface Standard4,
introduced into the OGC by the OpenMI Association, enable the chaining of Earth system models.

5

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)v.

Submitters
All questions regarding this submission should be directed to the editor or the submitters:
Name

Affiliation

Bart De Lathouwer

OGC

Mike Jackson

Univ. of Nottingham

Lance McKee

OGC

1. Introduction – Data communication for sustainable development
The Anthropocene is an informal term suggesting that human activities have now
affected the planet to such a great extent that they mark the beginning of a new geologicalepoch. In this new epoch, world peace and prosperity, and perhaps our survival, will
depend on how well we collaboratively manage our interactions, not just with each other,
but also with the Earth's atmosphere, water, soil, geology, energy resources and nonhuman life forms.

Figure 1: Now, in the Anthropocene, human activity is the dominant factor effecting change inthe Earth's rocks and soils, water bodies, atmosphere and flora and fauna. We need to tune andsharpen our information technology for the purpose of managing change to benefit present andfuture generations.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumWe mustn't discount the fact that we have already begun managing our interactions with
Earth systems: For example, fewer new dams are being built, energy efficiency isimproving, controls have begun to be placed on pesticides and herbicides, and earlyprograms are in place to limit CO2 emissions. We are also getting better at managing our
responses to Earth systems' impacts on us. Our science, technology and collaboration
have brought us steadily improving disaster response plans and increasingly accurate
weather forecasts, algal bloom reports, climate change predictions, soil moisturemonitoring etc. that help us to be resilient in the face of Earth system events.
Progress toward sustainability has significantly depended on electronic information
technology (IT) that helps us develop and share knowledge about Earth changes and ourrole in those changes. To build on what has been accomplished, in this paper we argue forthe development and use of domain-specific but technically interrelated IT standards forcommunication and data integration within and between domains that focus on theenvironment. These domains include each of the Earth sciences and many of theenvironmental response and management domains: emissions (trading, taxing andregulating), infrastructure monitoring, public health, embedded energy
tracking/reduction, etc.

Figure 2: We get a rapidly increasing number of terabytes of data from an explosion of sensors,
satellites, citizens, models etc. However, data has little value if it can't be easily discovered,assessed, accessed, aggregated, combined, passed from system to system, etc.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumEnvironmental science, education, business and policy require Earth observations andmeasurements, but data is not enough. Equally important is the requirement tocommunicate and process those measurements to turn them into information, knowledge,
wisdom, policy and business. Maps are also not enough. They put geographic
information into a pre-digital paper space. We need to put environmental data – micro,
meso and macro, indoor and outdoor – into IT space, and we need to be smarter about
how we do this so we can benefit from the extraordinary and rapidly advancing
capabilities of information technology.
The Earth is a "flux coupler", simultaneously coupling dynamic processes of many kinds.
Our ability to model complex, dynamic and interlinked Earth systems5 depends on ourability to transfer outputs (along with metadata – data about the data – including
measures of error and uncertainty) from one model as inputs into another model. Theinterrelatedness of Earth systems requires that the disciplines focused on different
systems – geology, hydrology, meteorology, etc. – use data encodings and geoprocessing
software interfaces that are designed to be useful in cross-disciplinary and longitudinalstudies.
Communication and large-scale data collection and processing depend on the ability ofsystems to interoperate through standards-based interfaces and encodings.
Standardization means, “agreeing on a common system.” In many cases these necessary
standards don't currently exist. Despite the success of the Open Geospatial Consortium inraising the profile of these issues, more needs to be done to raise awareness of therequired standards and the benefits they could bring. This paper provides examples of
how this standardization work is currently being done and outlines a roadmap fordeveloping a unified set of environmental communication standards. The authors call on
stakeholders to help us add detail to the roadmap and enlist domain experts in building aunified standards platform for sustainable development.

2. What needs to be measured and communicated for sustainable
development?
Researchers studying socio-technical aspects of sustainability could make important
contributions by addressing this question. Insights from an analysis of what needs to bemeasured and communicated would act as a stimulus to businesses, organizations andgovernment data policy experts to partner in data coordination committees. It would act
as a stimulus for Standards Development Organizations to begin gatheringinteroperability requirements and developing standards. With this progress, the potential
for businesses to explore innovative offerings and business models in anticipation ofprojected market opportunities arising from enhanced information flows would beenhanced.
5Interfaces implementing the OGC Open Modelling Interface Version 2 (OpenMI) Interface Standard5,
introduced into the OGC by the OpenMI Association, enable the chaining of Earth system models such as
climate models.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

The domains for which researchers might assess value chains to discern theirenvironmental data communication needs and opportunities include:
Greenhouse gases: sources, sinks, offsets6 and effects
Pollution: sources, sinks, mitigation efforts and effects
Wastes: toxic wastes, industrial wastes available as feed stock for industrial
processes or products, waste mitigation sites and processes
Physical Infrastructure: buildings, capital projects, transportation, communication,energy facilities etc. – for efficiency, environmental safety and "emergy"(quantification of energy and resources embedded in structures)
Resources: fossil fuels, biofuels, geophysical (water, wind, ores etc.); biologicalresources (fish, crops, forests, soil etc.), electromagnetic spectrum, temperaturedeltas and microclimates, ecosystem services (cooling, carbon capture, oxygen
production, air filtering, groundwater recharge, silencing, wind breaks, etc.)
provided by natural features such as waterways, forests, green space and urban
trees
Hazards: radiation; toxic wastes; crime; fire, flood, earthquake, drought, wind andice storms; occupational hazards, hazards from unsafe physical infrastructure
Health: environmental health; disease demographics; public safety statistics;
health stressors; health facility siting, design and operation
The IT standards community cannot undertake this effort without the leadership of thedomain experts. In each of these domains, stakeholders, including environmental
researchers, government agencies and businesses, need to reach consensus onrequirements for shared ontologies7 and data integration.
This work would proceed by exploring workflows and use cases involved in a wide arrayof present day environmental activities, such as:
Cap and trade schemes and valuation of, for example, carbon offset projects
City rating systems (STAR8, C409, ISO 3712010, ICLEI U.S. Community Protocol
for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions11, etc.)
Environmental regulation, taxes and impact statements
Industrial waterways reclamation
6

CarbonML, an encoding standard that would, for example, enable international exchange, verification,assessment and commerce in carbon offsets, has been proposed to the OGC membership.
7"In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types,
properties, and interrelationships of the entities that … exist for a particular domain of discourse."
Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)8

STAR: http://www.starcommunities.org/rating-system

9

C40: http://www.c40.org/

10

ISO 37120: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=62436

11

ICLEI: http://www.icleiusa.org/blog/iclei-releases-first-national-standard-for-measuring-acommunity2019s-carbon-footprint

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumIntegrated community energy systems
Oil spills
Resource/waste circulation
Sustainable agriculture
Triple bottom line accounting
Analysis of such activities by IT standards developers would result in environmental data
communication requirements – interoperability requirements – to be addressed ininteroperability test-beds and standards working groups. Significant societal andeconomic returns could derive from relatively small strategic investments applied to suchactivity. As described below, with WaterML 2.0, GeoSciML, PipelineML and others, thiswork has begun.
The Russian economist Nikolai Kondratiev first postulated major cycles of innovation in
1925. Dr James Bradfield Moody, author of The Sixth Wave, argues that we have now
entered a sixth major wave of innovation — that of resource efficiency.12 Global
warming and pollution-induced health problems are consequences of terrible
inefficiencies. Much old physical infrastructure is inefficient and in disrepair and muchnew infrastructure, hopefully more efficient, needs to be built to serve expanding urban
populations. The environment and the economy are degraded by an abundance of usable
but unused industrial byproducts13. The simple facts of resource depletion and population
growth underscore the widespread need for innovations in resource efficiency. Progress
toward efficiency (including but not limited to economic efficiency) is a critical elementin Sustainable Development and it depends on more efficient communication ofenvironmental data.
Urgent discipline-specific and project-specific data integration efforts don't wait forinternational standards, and thus ad hoc encodings and interface specifications proliferate.
A few of these come into wide use, but without a concerted international effort to identify
and involve a critical mass of key stakeholders, important domain requirements are
ignored in ad hoc standards development and thus most of the integration work is notreusable and must be repeated for the next project.
The next section explains why environmental accounting will motivate development of
the environmental domain encoding standards that will be critical to sustainable
development.

12

Sixth wave of innovation: http://www.wired.com/2011/06/sixth-wave-of-innovation/

13

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, William McDonough and Michael Braungart,
2002, North Point Press.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

3. Environmental accounting needs indices based on trusted data

Figure 3: Sustainable development will impact commerce, government oversight, taxes andperhaps monetary systems. All of these require a unitary system of environmental data encoding
standards that enable trustable, transparent and digitally useful communication of environmental
measurements.

Science-based analysis of environmental factors has little effect on the environment until
the analyses affect the way business is done. The US Environmental Protection Agency's"An Introduction to Environmental Accounting"14 begins with this definition:"The term environmental accounting has many meanings and uses. Environmental
accounting can support national income accounting, financial accounting, or internalbusiness managerial accounting. This primer focuses on the application ofenvironmental accounting as a managerial accounting tool for internal businessdecisions. Moreover, the term 'environmental cost' has at least two major dimensions:(1) it can refer solely to costs that directly impact a company's bottom line (heretermed 'private costs'), or (2) it also can encompass the costs to individuals, society,and the environment for which a company is not accountable (here termed 'societal
costs'). The discussion in this primer concentrates on private costs because that iswhere companies starting to implement environmental accounting typically begin.
However, much of the material is applicable to societal costs as well."Environmental accounting and environmental auditing will depend on standards forenvironmental evidence, and these will require widely accepted measurements andtrustable, transparent and digitally useful description and communication of
measurements. Trustable, transparent and useful measurement will be necessary in policy
making and regulation; in commerce, such as emissions trading and "cradle-to-cradle" or"waste as a resource" transactions (see "circular economy")15; in documenting the valueof a company's goodwill during an acquisition; and in auditing to verify value andcompliance in all such activities.

14

http://www.epa.gov/ppic/pubs/busmgt.pdf

15

Circular Economy: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumEnvironmental IT standards can be used as a basis for indices that simplify andstandardize environmental accounting tasks. Indices exist for other accounting purposessuch as quantifying liquidity16 and summarizing changes in prices17. Environmental data
encoding and software interface standards can reduce the complexity of environmental
information in transparent ways so that accountants and auditors can use simply statedderived indices to produce, compare, aggregate and monetize results.
Eurostat18, the statistical office of the European Union, is currently working to develop an
environmental accounting framework19 to:
Track the links between the environment and the economy at EU, national, sector
and industry level.
Measure what impacts the economy has on the environment (e.g. pollution) andhow the environment contributes to the economy (e.g. use of raw materials,
resource efficiency, etc.) by using the accounting framework and concepts of thenational accounts.
List, in quantifiable terms, for example, the amount of pollution produced bydifferent industries, which may in turn be compared with employment and thevalue of output produced by these industries.
Environmental accounting will require much more widespread and organized collection
and communication of environmental data than current practices make possible. As
described below, data will come from citizens' wireless devices and non-dedicated sensor
webs as well as sensor webs, citizens, and businesses and environmental technologist
teams dedicated to particular types of data collection. Environmental IT standards willplay an essential role.

4. Citizen Science and data quality
Mass participation in environmental data collection helps raise awareness ofenvironmental issues even as it helps to quantify environmental phenomena. Thus it isreasonable to assume that participation in environmental data collection by citizens will
increase over time.
For citizen science and crowd-sourced data it will be particularly important to havecollection apps that automatically record and transmit not only the sensor and human16

Liquidity Index: http://www.accountingtools.com/liquidity-index

17

Price Index: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/price-index.html

18Eurostat: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/about_eurostat/introduction

19

Environmental accounts:
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/environmental_accounts/introduction

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumobservations but also metadata about those observations20. When data of known
provenance is aggregated or conflated with data of unknown provenance, the quality of
the resultant data is less certain than the quality of the data of known provenance, andthus "fitness for use" of the data product is less knowable. Steps in human and machineexecuted workflows involving everything from sensor deployment, calibration and data
reduction to passage of data through environmental models to environmental accounting
indices will be logged, often automatically, to make data provenance and quality more
knowable.
The COBWEB Citizen Observatory Web21, a project of the European Union’s 7th
Research and Development Framework Programme, researches methods of validating
and quality assuring crowd-sourced data so that it may be beneficially aggregated withreference data from authoritative sources. No single approach to this validation and QA
process is likely to be adequate and so the research focus is towards developing a multistranded framework that could take input from several discrete sources.22 For example,
one technique useful in collection of volunteered geographic information (VGI) is"interactive direction of the observer". The observer is challenged with questions during
the recording of observations, reducing the uncertainty associated with the data.
GeoViQua23 is a European Community Seventh Framework funded project that led to thedevelopment of the OGC Geospatial User Feedback Standards Working Group. User
Feedback metadata can be valuable to quality estimates.
All data falls somewhere on a scale of precision and accuracy and no data are 100%
precise and accurate. Users of spatial data and those adding metadata to data too often
forget that a degree of uncertainty always exists. The GEOViQua studies have shown ahuge quality deficiency in the recording of metadata even now where the emphasis is on
the professional data collector.
It may be that we will need to move towards a much more probabilistic style of working
using Big Data techniques for finding probabilistic associations between data items rather
than tightly controlled matchings derived through formal ontologies. Nevertheless, thosedevising such Big Data techniques will benefit from also accessing quality estimatespublished as part of a data collection's metadata, and such estimates derive much of theirvalue from compliance with international open standards such as ISO 19157 and ISO
19115 that define how quality has been calculated. Much work remains in development

20

Metadata is the first step of putting an observation into context. The context is not necessarily metadata,
but can (hopefully and necessarily) be reproduced using it. Once context is known, data becomes
meaningful.

21

COBWEB Citizen Observatory Web - http://cobwebproject.eu/

22

Meek, S., Jackson, M. J., Leibovici, D. (2014), “A Flexible Framework for Assessing the Quality of
Crowd-sourced Data”, in Huerta, Schade, Granell (Eds): Connecting a Digital Europe through Location andPlace. Proc., AGILE'2014 Int. Conf. on Geographic Information Science, Castellón, June, 3-6. ISBN: 97890-816960-4-3 http://repositori.uji.es/xmlui/handle/10234/98927
23

QUAlity aware Visualization for the Global Earth Observation System of Systems http://www.geoviqua.org/

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

of such environmental standards, including integration with still-emerging standards suchas UNCertML.24

5. Open Data and sustainable development
Open interface and encoding standards are a critical requirement for Open Data.
In Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) efforts around the world, governments have wisely
invested in gathering thematic data into databases and making those databases searchable
and accessible by citizens for a wide variety of purposes. SDI efforts are motivated by therealization that in the Information Age, shared data is an integral part of infrastructure, aresource that contributes to national wealth. The more it is used, the more valuable it
becomes.
The Internet can provide open access to data in SDIs and also, potentially, to a muchlarger array of spatially referenced data gathered from citizens and diverse distributed
sensors and databases. Discovery, assessment, access and use all depend on standards
implemented in the service of policies and business models.
"Radical reuse," "amplification of collective intelligence," "data-driven intelligence," and"virtual experiments" are some of the terms used to describe Open Data efforts such as
the PolyMath Project25, the Allen Brain Atlas26, Galaxy Zoo27, GenBank28, the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey29, and Medline3031. In the geosciences, we have OneGeology32, theU.S. Geoscience Information Network33 and the Ocean Observatories Initiative34. We
need much more geoscience Open Data to accomplish what we must to achievesustainable development in the Anthropocene. Some high quality journals are now

24

An OGC Discussion paper on UnCertML can be found at
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/dp. The UnCertML specification available at the UnCertML web
page remains the authoritative version. The specification is free and available to the public, but is not
maintained through an open consensus process.
25

PolyMath Project: http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Main_Page

26

Allen Brain Atlas: http://www.brain-map.org/

27

Galaxy Zoo: http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

28

GenBank: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/29

Sloan Digital Sky Survey: http://www.sdss.org/

30

MedLine: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/pmresources.html

31

These are discussed in "Reinventing Discovery – The New Era of Networked Science," by MichaelNielsen, Princeton University Press, 2012.
32

OneGeology: http://www.onegeology.org/

33

U.S. Geoscience Network: http://usgin.org/

34

Ocean Observatories Initiative:http://oceanobservatories.org/

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumrequesting that authors provide data together with the manuscripts, and they are
publishing the data, but these journals are still in the minority of journals.
Consider how much data development is wasted in the Earth sciences. Often with great
effort and at great expense, scientists collect data that they use to write papers. The
papers are preserved in journals, but the data, unless it has been collected and publisheden masse by government agencies, is seldom published and open for wider review and forreuse in longitudinal or cross-disciplinary studies. Most of it is lost.
The open data movement has begun, but effective open data policy and practice depends
on open interface and encoding standards to provide efficient publishing, discovery,
assessment, access (with protection and attribution) and use of data.35 Consistent use ofstandard web service interfaces enables these operations to be "chained" in proceduresthat greatly enhance the value of the data and the scope of what can be done with it.
Data curation36 will become more important as sustainable development becomes more
dependent on science and open data. Data worth preserving is worth preserving withmetadata that describes the data, including details about provenance and quality. Also, if
it is worth preserving, it should be catalogued correctly so it can be found and used. As
noted above, it should be served through open standard interfaces so it can be usedefficiently.

6. Keeping up with rapidly evolving IT
TCP/IP37, an IT standard, undergirds the Internet. Other IT standards such as HTTP38 andXML39 (and the associated HTML40 standard) undergird the Web. Together, thesefundamental IT standards and many others provide a foundation for the common systemfor communicating geospatial data and geoprocessing instructions, which is specified
mainly in ISO/TC 211 and Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)41 standards. Most
environmental datums have a location or area, so they are geospatial data42.

35

See "18 Reasons for Open Publication of Geoscience Data" – http://www.earthzine.org/2010/08/04/18reasons-for-open-publication-of-geoscience-data/, by Lance McKee.
36

See "The Data Conservancy Instance: Infrastructure and Organizational Services for Research Data
Curation" http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september12/mayernik/09mayernik.html
37

TCP/IP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_protocol_suite

38

HTTP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

39

XML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xml

40

HTML: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Html

41

OGC: http://www.opengeospatial.org

42

Geospatial data: http://www.epa.gov/records/faqs/geospatial.htm

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

OGC Web Service standards43 have brought geospatial technologies – GIS, remotesensing, navigation, facilities management etc. – out of their technology-type stovepipes
and vendor stovepipes into a much larger world of users and possibilities. OGC Web
Services standards include some of the first Anthropocene-epoch standards of the kind
we are promoting: The OGC WaterML 2.0, GeoSciML and netCDF encoding standards.
We describe these exemplars in sections that follow.
However, not all standards for sustainable development will be Web service44 standards,
because Web services are surely not the endpoint of IT evolution. During the 1980s
and1990s, IT was database oriented, and the OGC's first standard, Simple Features for
SQL, was database oriented. IT progress from 2000-2010 provided the Web services
foundation that supports OGC Web Services, which depend on XML and the OGC
Geography Markup Language (GML), an XML grammar for encoding geospatial
information. OGC Web Services standards will probably be with us for a very long time,
but the TCP/IP and HTTP standards also provide a platform for new technology
approaches not bounded by the established Web services paradigm. Currently, theseinclude JSON45, REST46, Linked Data47 and the Semantic Web48, all of which offer new
possibilities and a path to the future. These complement the OGC's OGC Web Services
standards with new approaches that can use and extend OGC Web Services. Linked data
and the Semantic Web, in particular, will provide a quantum leap into a new level of ITenhanced spatial awareness. Often these new approaches will involve simple point data.
Schemes based on point data are unlikely to replace more complex spatial representations(polygons, grid arrays, 5D fluid models, triangulated irregular networks etc.), but simple
point data will be useful in many situations, including much of Citizen Science49 and theInternet of Things50.
It's worth noting here that there are different temporal coordinate reference systems justas there are different spatial coordinate reference systems. Advances in combined spatiotemporal reference systems are a focus of work in the OGC.51

43

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

44

Web services: http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/Activity

45

JSON: http://json.org/

46

REST: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_state_transfer

47

Linked data: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

48

Semantic web: http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/

49

Citizen Science: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100804/full/466685a.html

50Internet of Things:
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_internet_of_things
51

See the OGC Temporal Domain Working Group(http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/temporaldwg) and the OGC Name Type Specification for
Coordinate Reference Systems (https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=46361).

16

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumWe don't know what other geoprocessing and distributed computing requirements andinnovations will emerge52, but standards will surely play a role in making them useful
and widely used resources for sustainable development.
It would be a mistake to assume that IT standards developed to serve near-termcommercial mass market needs will meet all the digital communication requirements ofscience, commerce and government in an environmental age. While it is true that markets
drive the evolution of technology, it is also true that fundamental standards shapetechnology and market outcomes. Wouldn't Internet and Web businesses be different if
HTTP and XML had been specified differently? Standards are developed and evolve tomeet market needs as those needs are perceived by the standards' developers, but in turnthe standards probably only survive if those perceptions match the actual and evolving
needs of the market. The mass market's scale drives investment for innovations andefficiencies that become available to science, but the mass market's requirements do notnecessarily fully encompass the requirements of science or sustainable development. It isthus important for individuals and institutions concerned with science and sustainable
development to participate in standards working groups.
In Greening through IT – Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability53,
Bill Tomlinson writes, "IT compresses complexity … by establishing agreed-on
standards for the cooperation of devices and people." To be more precise, it is not IT
itself that establishes agreed-on standards for the cooperation of devices and people;
rather, the standards with the widest benefit derive from the tried and proven social
processes facilitated by standards organizations to bring IT providers and users together.
Dominant IT providers' sometimes open (but not consensus-derived) encodings andinterfaces (or Application Programming Interfaces – APIs) often become important
standards, but the consensus-derived open standards that provide a foundation for theInternet and the Web ultimately have wider value than the open APIs of any closed
proprietary ecosystem. TCP/IP, HTTP and XML provide a foundation for a larger
ecosystem of other consensus-derived open standards that extend the capabilities of theInternet and Web. The authors of this paper argue for a concerted and ongoing
global effort to first define interoperability requirements for environmental science,business and policy, and then develop and implement consensus-derived, free andopen environmental IT standards that meet those requirements while co-evolving
with the larger IT standards framework and advances in IT.
A concerted effort – systematic collaboration – is absolutely essential. Collaboration isnecessary to create good standards that are widely implemented. Collaboration in
52

There is increasing interest in geospatial filtering and processing through flexible query languages. See
the OGC Filter Encoding 2.0 Encoding Standard (http://docs.opengeospatial.org/is/09-026r2/09026r2.html), the OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS),(http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wcps) for filtering and processing on coverages, and
GeoSPARQL (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/geosparql) for filtering and processing of
metadata.
53

Greening through IT – Information Technology for Environmental Sustainability,
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/greening-through-it

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumdeveloping standards also reveals deeper collaboration opportunities and requirementsthat cannot be met by technical standards. This is why standards development is best
undertaken by both technical experts and policy experts.
Because the need to address specific spatial information requirements cuts across themissions of so many Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), the Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC) collaborates with other SDOs to achieve spatial interoperability
outcomes that would be impossible without inter-SDO cooperation. The OGC's
established alliances54 and history of success in forging alliances with other SDO’s andprofessional organizations position the OGC as an SDO network hub for environmental
standards development.
If geospatial data were simple, there would be no need for the OGC. However, it is not.

Figure 4: Developing standards for geospatial data and services requires special
expertise.
Ed Lazowska, founding director of the University of Washington’s data-centric eScience
Institute, says that his goal in hiring eScience Institute faculty has been to hire a breed of“pi (π) people.”55 The π symbol has two legs connected at the top. Pi people have a leg ineach of two disciplines. They are researchers who are equally conversant in two or moreseemingly disparate fields, such as neuroscience and sociology, and these researchers
serve as interdisciplinary connectors.
54

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

55

http://crosscut.com/2014/05/22/science/120199/washington-research-fdation-grant-uw-atkins/?page=218

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumFigure 5: Environmental domain experts with expertise in multiple worlds have great value in thedevelopment of environmental IT interface and encoding standards.

Developing environmental standards requires "pi people" who are expert in one or moreenvironmental domains and also in IT. The OGC encourages its members and themembers of other SDOs to cross-participate in different SDO's working groups to address
the requirements of environmental workflows. Because of the need in sustainable
development for interdisciplinary and cross-community communication and coordination,
there is a great need in standards activities for "milking stool people" with a foundation ineach of three disciplines, one of which is IT, and two of which are different domains or
different IT standards organizations.
Most of the environmental standards we anticipate in this paper will be standards
designed for particular domains of activity and particular "information communities." We
explore this in the following sections.

7. Semantic standards and technical standards
The domain-specific environmental IT standards development we call for in this paper
will come as two worlds converge: the world of semantic standards (metadata,
ontologies, data models, etc.) and the world of technical standards (such as the OGC's
software interfaces and encodings). Several key OGC standards were designed to be
tailored to suit the needs of particular applications. In this section and the following
section, we explain why and how environmental information communities (including, so
far, hydrology, geology, weather/climate, pipelines and 3D urban models) have begun to
do this tailoring by bringing their semantic standards experts together with technicalstandards experts in OGC working groups.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumFigure 6: Important foundational standards are in place, as are domain standards for hydrology,
geology, weather and soils. Much work remains, however, to create a coherent "system ofsystems" for environmental communication. Progress depends on the commitment andparticipation of communities of interest who have a critical role to play in sustainable
development.

7.1 Domain semantics necessitate semantic standards
Over the last two decades, many information communities have learned the importanceof data coordination and have learned how to do it. Information communities who dependon sharing information often put in place data coordination committees and processes forcreating and maintaining standard data models56 and metadata content standards. The
data model used by an information community is their standard way of describing spatial
information. It provides a data dictionary and related details necessary for the sharing,aggregation and comparison of data within the community. Metadata associated with adata set includes the data model along with other data about the data – date of collection,
person or organization responsible for the collection, etc. Data model development
proceeds as a part of an information community's metadata standards development effort.
Such standards are often referred to as "semantic standards". Because of these standards,
different information systems used within the community can "speak the same language".
Different data sets that use the same data model can be aggregated or compared.
56

A deeper discussion of data models, ontologies, conceptual schemas etc. is beyond the scope of thispaper. See "Ontologies and Data Models – are they the same?"
http://topquadrantblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/ontologies-and-data-models-are-they.html.

20

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumSemantic standards also facilitate communication between information communities:
When each community's data model is published and relatively stable, translation
between different data models is easier and more precise, despite some inevitable loss of
information. Data models necessarily evolve as information communities evolve, and so
this data coordination process within and between domains is an ongoing activity. Datamodelers working with other data modelers are key standards developers for the
Anthropocene.
Geospatial standards are important for environmental work because virtually everythingin our environment has a spatial component and because interactions between
environmental features and phenomena depend on proximity. In the geospatial world, an"information community" is an industry, profession, academic discipline or other domainthat shares a set of spatial information communication requirements. Because thegeospatial element is so important, many data coordination efforts have begun in efforts
to create "spatial data infrastructures." See for example the US Federal Geographic Data
Committee57 and the European Commission's INSPIRE Directive58.
7.2 Technical standards hitch environmental standards to IT innovations
Also over the last two decades, the members of the OGC have developed policies andprocedures for working together to develop consensus-based open interface and encoding
standards that provide a way for any two computer systems to request and return any kindof spatial data. These "technical standards" are broadly useful within all spatial data
information communities. They support inter-community communication and they arealso essential for convergence and integration of different kinds of spatial technologies,
such as 2D/3D/4D imaging, vector GIS, surveying, CAD, tracking, etc. The members of
the OGC maximize new standards' viability by working together to promote widespread
product implementation and market uptake of the standards.
Like semantic standards, technical standards evolve. The fundamental domain-neutral
spatial technology standards framework is now in place, but rapid advances in technology
make OGC members keenly aware that this foundation needs continual attention, as
described above in the discussion of JSON, RESTful programming approaches andlinked data. Such industry-wide advances force revision and rethinking of establishedtechnical standards. Discussions about revision invariably run into the issue of backwards
compatibility, a standard's lifetime of usefulness, and the importance of stability to bothtechnology providers and technology users who have made investments based on thestandard. These are difficult but important issues. Mature standards development
organizations and their long-term members have experience in negotiating these issues.
They also have a keen awareness of the costs and risks associated with letting market
leaders establish proprietary standards outside of an open consensus process. Industry
market leaders work in standards organizations because they, like their competitors and

57

FGDC (Federal Geographic Data Committee): https://www.fgdc.gov/

58

INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community):
http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumdespite their natural desire to "lock in" customers, have business reasons to implement
and help develop open standards.
Technical standards are in place that can provide access control, security and certain
privacy protections, but development also needs to address other issues such as geospatial
data rights management and, as discussed above, data quality.
Much work remains in the broad area of technical standards for geospatial
interoperability, despite the fact that a mature domain-neutral open spatial technology
standards framework is already largely in place. One reason work remains is thattechnology is advancing so rapidly. Another reason is that new information communities
keep appearing, as shown in Figure 6 below.

Figure 7: In climate science, as in many domains, new disciplines arise, and they are new
information communities. Their data models differ, but they need to share data andcommunicate. Communities in relationship need interoperability.
In the next section we describe how the OGC Geography Markup Language (GML)
Encoding Standard and other OGC standards can be used to develop international
domain-specific encoding standards that bring semantic standards and technical standards
together. This is a key cyberinfrastructure innovation for environmental science, businessand policymaking. A domain that develops a domain-specific data encoding standard
based on OGC standards and on the domain's semantic standards gives domain
participants much fuller access to developments in the mainstream digital technology
world: Web searches, chained computer models, full use of cloud infrastructures, Big
Data, data analytics, data fusion, management tools for open data, heterogeneous sensor
webs and much more.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortium

8. GML and SWE profiles and application schemas – Basis for domainspecific environmental encoding standards
2

Just as calculations like F=MA and e=mc require a unitary system59 of standard
measurements of energy, matter, time and space, digital communications" involving
environmental data require a unitary system of communicating not only measurements
but also descriptions of where, how and when the measurements were made.
The OGC Geography Markup Language (GML) Encoding Standard60 (also an ISO
standard since 2007) provides the essential "where" and "when" components. Aninternational open standard that is now widely implemented, GML is an XML61 grammar
for expressing geographical features. Fundamental OGC Web Service Interface Standards
such as the OGC Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface Standard62 are specificallydesigned to write and read GML-encoded data. The WFS standard is implemented in
virtually all commercial GIS products, and therefore GML is the "lingua franca" of those
products. The use of GML reduces the need to use data transfer standards for batch
conversion of data from one encoding to another as a first step in integrating differently
encoded data sets. Information systems that contain and process geospatial data in any
encoding can be provided with interfaces that enable direct two-way inter-systemcommunication via GML. Also, pared-down profiles and application schemas of GML
are embedded in many non-OGC standards to assure consistent communication of
geospatial data in the wider global information infrastructure.
The OGC Observations and Measurements (O&M) Encoding Standard63 specifies an
XML implementation of the OGC and ISO Observations and Measurements (O&M)
conceptual model. O&M provides a unitary system for encoding any type of observation
or measurement, including volunteered geographic information (VGI), which may be
anecdotal or photographic rather than the result of an instrument measurement.
Both GML and O&M can be adapted to the particular needs of domains. They provide
the means for domains to build their domain-consensus data models into an XML
encoding that is recognized by any system that implements GML or O&M. The OGC
WaterML 2.0 Encoding Standard, described below, provides a good example.
Any GML or O&M data can be used directly with other GML or O&M data. For
example, an agronomist could do analysis using a hydrology layer and a crop type layer.
Or an emergency response coordinator could use WaterML-encoded river flow data to
59

For most such calculations, British imperial, US customary or metric system units can be used, but
consistent use of one or another is necessary! The alternative is frequent use of error-introducing unit
conversions.
60

http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml

61

eXtensible Markup Language: http://www.w3.org/XML/62

http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wfs

OGC Observations and Measurements Standard. http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/om. (OGC
Observations and Measurements v2.0 IS also published as ISO/DIS 19156).
63

23

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumtrigger a Common Alert Protocol (CAP)64 alert, because GML is embedded in CAP.
Similarly, in the US the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM), an XML
encoding for exchanging information across state and local government bodies, uses
GML and is interoperable with GML-based standards such as WaterML 2.0.
OGC coverages associate positions within a bounded space to feature attribute values.
Examples include Earth images, referenced and non-referenced rasters, curvilinear grids,
and point clouds. The OGC GML Coverages (GMLCOV) standard provides a unified
method for encoding OGC coverages in GML, the OGC Sensor Web Enablement (SWE)Common Standard, and the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS) Interface Standard. As
GMLCOV is independent of a particular service definition, it allows coverage data to beexchanged through different types of services that implement these OGC standards. The
OGC's modular, scalable coverage model provides a foundation for a wide variety ofenvironmental "Big Data" applications.

9. GEO and the GEOSS AIPThe Group on Earth Observations (GEO)65 has helped establish a platform of cooperation
among government data providers interested in sustainable development. GEO includes
80 Governments, the European Commission and 58 intergovernmental, international, andregional Participating Organizations with a mandate in Earth observation or related
issues. The ten years of GEO have yielded pledges of thousands of core datasets and web
services. Progress has been made in encouraging interoperability across GEO through the
adoption of standards by Members and Participating Organizations and the testing of
infrastructure through a series of annual prototyping projects undertaken through the
Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Architecture Implementation
Pilot (AIP)66 activity. The OGC leads the multi-year AIP activity using the OGC
Interoperability Program policy and procedures. The AIP is now in its 7th year.
The AIP task involves developing and deploying new process and infrastructurecomponents for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) as well as for the broader
GEOSS architecture. The GCI provides operational components that enable 1) the
registration of EO assets to GEOSS, 2) the identification of adopted standards and bestpractices, and 3) the discovery and access of data via download, web services, andthrough custom portals and websites.
The current AIP activity, AIP-7, aims to create and deploy several modern, lightweight
web or mobile apps that are fed by multiple registered standards-based data and64

CAP 1.2 is an OASIS standard that grew out of an effort begun in 2001 by an international, independentgroup of over 120 emergency managers who began specifying and prototyping the Common Alerting
Protocol data structure based on the recommendations of a US National Science and Technology Council(NSTC) report.
65Group on Earth Observations

66

GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP)

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumprocessing services - each app designed to address a specific user-driven problem. As
with previous AIP activities, this year's (2015) AIP work is adding to the framework ofstandards described in previous sections of this paper.

10. Examples of domain standards for the Age of the Environment
10.1 WaterML 2.0 – hydrology
Nations are moving towards more holistic structuring of hydrologic monitoring systems
in order to provide integrated local, national and international views on the state of water
resources. This is necessary to address issues such as water quality monitoring, flood
warnings, water management guidelines (applying restrictions, setting allocations etc.),
and drought management. In addition, terrestrial water movement plays a role in climate
processes; cross-domain climatological enquiry and modelling requires access to diverse
types of observational data, including hydrological observations.
In response, key players in the international hydrology community came together in the
OGC to develop an international hydrologic data encoding standard. The Australian
Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO's Water for a Healthy Country Flagship project inAustralia; the Consortium for the Advancement of Hydrological Sciences Inc.
(CUAHSI), the San Diego Supercomputer Center, NOAA in the US; The Federal
Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (disy Informationssysteme GmbH), theGerman Federal Institute of Hydrology and Kisters AG in Germany; the International
Office for Water – Sandre in France; Deltares in the Netherlands and various othernational authorities and companies contributed to initial working group discussions andalso development and testing in OGC testbeds and pilots. The work proceeds under thejoint World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC) Hydrology Domain Working Group67.
The OGC WaterML 2.0 Encoding Standard, now an adopted OGC standard, is the main
product of this joint effort. WaterML2.0 is implemented as an application schema of theGeography Markup Language version 3.2.1 and it makes use of the OGC Observations &Measurements standard. The core aspect of the model is the correct, precise descriptionof time series hydrologic observations.
Hydrology data models are notoriously diverse, and yet most can be mapped to WaterML
2.0. WaterML 2.0 thus provides a “data model Rosetta Stone” for data sharing between
heterogeneous observation points and observation networks. A WaterML 2.0 compliant
interface can be configured for a hydrological database that uses a unique data model.
Access to similar data stored using two unique and dissimilar data models can proceedwithout manual intervention once the mapping between the two unique data models andthe WaterML 2.0 data model has been completed. The internationally vetted data model67

OGC Hydrology Domain Working Group(http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/hydrologydwg)

25

Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumbuilt into WaterML 2.0 also provides a model for optional improvement or harmonizationof local, regional or national hydrological data models.
WaterML 2.0 and the collaborative way it was developed provide a model for thedevelopment of other domain standards.
10.2 WXXM – weather
The aeronautical community depends heavily on WMO weather data, but this community
has special requirements for the sharing and use of the data. A new standard, WXXM –Weather Information Exchange Model, has been developed by the International Civil
Aviation Organisation ICAO, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and
EUROCONTROL in collaboration with the WMO and the OGC for the exchange ofaeronautical weather information in the context of a net-centric and global interoperable
Air Transport System (ATS).
WXXM uses GML tailored to the specific requirements of aeronautical meteorology. It isbased also on the OGC Observation and Measurement Model (O&M). Because WXXM
is a well-designed GML-based weather data encoding model, other domains, such as theelectric utility information system domain68, are exploring options for using WXXM or
harmonizing it with their standards, or else developing GML and O&M based weathermodels designed for their domains, in which most aviation use cases are irrelevant.
10.3 netCDF – climate and oceans
The network Common Data Form (netCDF) is a data model and a collection of accesslibraries for array-oriented scientific data. Originally developed by the University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), netCDF has been formally recognizedby U.S. government standards bodies and has become a de facto standard used around theworld, particularly in climate and ocean observation, analysis and modelling. For
example, output datasets from climate models being used for the Fifth Assessment Reportof the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change must be submitted in netCDF format,
using the associated Climate and Forecast (CF) metadata conventions (CF-netCDF).
The multi-dimensional gridded and multi-point data used in Fluid Earth Systems (FES)
work (primarily involving oceans and the atmosphere) is complex and different from the2D images in Earth imaging and the 2D/3D data layers in GIS. NetCDF and its
extensions provide an unprecedented degree of interoperability between complex FES
data and coverage-based data and systems (e.g. satellite observations); feature-based dataand systems (e.g. GIS layers); and specimen measurements (e.g. sensor observations).
68 International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), US National Rural Electric Cooperative Association(NRECA), Smart Grid Interoperability Panel (SGIP). Another SDO whose remit requires weather
information exchange is the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers(ASHRAE). ASHRAE SCP201P is a building/facility information model standard focused on loads; it
includes a weather model based on WXXM. Weather forecast information may be needed, for example, atwind/solar generators located on buildings other facilities subject to ASHRAE standards.

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial ConsortiumThis cross-technology interoperability is becoming increasingly important as FES
observations and forecasts achieve higher spatial resolutions — just a few kilometers.
The challenge is to enable practitioners in each technology realm to continue using thepowerful tools available through their traditional applications while allowing forintegration of data and applications between the two realms by means of standard, webbased interfaces.
10.4 GeoSciML – geology
GeoSciML – Geoscience Markup Language – is a GML Application Schema used tosupport interoperability of geologic information provided by national Geologic Surveyorganizations and other geological data custodians. GeoSciML is useful for encoding therelatively simple "interpreted geology" information that is conventionally portrayed on
geologic maps, but it can also be used to model more complex information types such as
physical and chemical characteristics. Its feature-type catalogue includes geologic units,
mapped features, geologic structures, as well as Earth materials (rocks andunconsolidated materials) and specializations of sampling features from the Observations
and Measurements standard such as boreholes and geologic specimens. Supporting
resources such as vocabularies for geoscience terminology and geologic timescales aredeveloped in concert with the GML and O&M application schemas.
The GeoSciML project was initiated in 2003 under the auspices of the International
Union of Geoscientists (UGS) Commission for the Management and Application of
Geoscience Information (CGI)69 working group on Data Model Collaboration - now theCGI Interoperability Working Group. The development of GeoSciML was strongly
influenced by predecessor projects in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan.
GeoSciML is intended to support data portals publishing data for customers, forinterchanging data between organisations that use different data definitions, data models
and even different languages and software/systems environments, and in particular, foruse in geoscience web services. GeoSciML is currently used by national and international
data sharing projects, including the OneGeology70 project, an effort to create alive geological map71 of the entire Earth by delivering data from many national
geological surveys. It is also used as the geologic data transfer standard by the European
Union INSPIRE Project72, the US Geoscience Information Network 73, and the Canadian
Groundwater Information Network74.
GeoSciML Version 3.1 was released in December 2012. In January 2013, a GeoSciML
Standards Working Group was initiated in OGC, in collaboration with CGI, to develop a69

http://www.cgi-iugs.org/O70

http://www.onegeology.org/

71

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_map

72

http://inspire.ec.europa.eu/

73

http://usgin.org/

74

http://gin.gw-info.net/service/api_ngwds:gin2/en/gin.html

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumversion 4 release as an OGC modular specification. This release will include simple
feature 'portrayal' schemes to support interoperable view services. Links to
documentation, XML schema and other resources are available at the GeoSciML
resource repository75.
In a notable recent development, two geologists who have been instrumental in thedevelopment of GeoSciML, Simon Cox and Stephen Richard, have published "Ageologic timescale ontology and service"76. This is an OWL (Web Ontology Language)
ontology for the geologic timescale, derived from a Unified Modeling Language (UML)model. The W3C Web Ontology Language (OWL) is a Semantic Web language designed
to represent rich and complex knowledge about things and their relationships. Based on
GeoSciML and other relevant standards, the geologic timescale ontology is an important
exemplar for making data encoded using OGC domain standards discoverable andaccessible to OWL queries. OWL is part of the W3C’s Semantic Web technology stack.
As the Web matures, the technologies of the Semantic Web will bring
unprecedented reasoning power to computer programs. These technologies will help toverify the consistency of knowledge and help make implicit knowledge explicit.
10.5 PipelineML SWG – pipeline management
Pipelines are not natural resources, but OGC standards developed for energy,transportation, Smart Cities, emissions trading, urban modeling, indoor location, etc.
belong to an important category of sustainable development standards for the
Anthropocene, those that facilitate efficient management of natural resources andenvironmental impacts.
An OGC PipelineML Standards Working Group (SWG) was chartered in June 2014 todevelop an open extensible standard intended to enable the interchange of pipeline data
between parties, disparate systems and software applications without loss of accuracy,
density or data resolution and without need for conversion between intermediate or
proprietary formats. The PODS Association77, a not-for-profit pipeline industry standards
organization, initiated the discussions that led to the formation of the PipelineML SWG.
They are using the OGC to develop a web services-based encoding standard thatincorporates the experience and expertise represented in the current PODS standard andthat is consistent with other geospatial data through its implementation of GML andO&M.
Currently, pipeline operators must take in information in a wide variety of media andformats. Considerable effort and expense is incurred converting, transforming, and often
massaging this data into a state in which the data is consumable by data management
tools. Additionally, this conversion process tends to introduce errors and loss of density
and resolution of data. A robust system for data exchange and service-oriented data
discovery, assessment, access and use would enable pipeline operators and service75

http://www.geosciml.org/

76

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12145-014-0170-6

77

http://www.pods.org/

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Copyright © 2015 Open Geospatial Consortiumproviders to dramatically reduce costs and shorten the time it takes to get criticalinformation into the hands of decision-makers. Maintaining a higher degree of integrity,
reliability, and accuracy of the data in an important anticipated benefit of the proposed
PipelineML. The PODS data exchange format was an important step in that direction.
Now PipelineML will bring PODS into the world of dynamic web service based data
discovery, access, integration and use.
Not directly related to the PipelineML activity, another OGC activity serving resource
management in the oil and gas industry is the collaborative effort to develop an Oil Spill
Response (OSR) Common Operating Picture (COP)78. It is anticipated that this will beadvanced to the state of an OGC Best Practice. The OGC is working on this with theInternational Association of Oil & Gas Producers (OGP)79 through the Geomatics
Committee, IPIECA (the global oil and gas industry association for environmental andsocial issues)80 and Resource Data, Inc.81
10.6 Other environmental domains in the OGC
The OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML)82, a GML application schema,provides an open encoding for multiple levels of 3D detail about the built environment.
CityGML "Application Domain Extensions" (ADEs) have been developed for modelingnoise, tunnels, bridges, Building Information Models (buildingSMART International'sIndustry Foundation Classes (IFCs)83), water flow, utility networks, and immovable
property taxation. It fills an important gap in urban spatial data infrastructures and isdestined to play an important role in Smart Cities and sustainable development.
The OGC IndoorGML standard84 is being developed to establish a common schema
framework for indoor navigation applications. IndoorGML, which will also be
an application schema of GML, will use data encoded using CityGML andbuildingSMART International's Industry Foundation Class (IFC) Building Information
Model (BIM) standards.
As of June 2014, new OGC working groups have been chartered or are being chartered toaddress interoperability issues in urban planning85, health86, agriculture87, and civil78

http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/ogpoilspill79

http://www.ogp.org.uk/

80

http://www.ogp.org.uk/committees/geomatics/

81

http://www.resdat.com/

82

http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/citygml

83

buildingSMART International's Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs):
http://www.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc
84

OGC IndoorGML: http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/indoorgmlswg

85

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/206786

http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/HealthDWG/WebHome

87

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2060

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engineering88. In addition, a recent memorandum of understanding between the OGC
and the Electronic Commerce Code Management Association (ECCMA)89 has beenannounced that aims to establish a joint working group to develop and promote
implementation of a new standard under the name ePROP - electronic Property
standardization. That proposed standard is intended to be a valuable support for
workflows involving real estate and related financial dealings. This standard forcommunicating characterizations real estate will play a role in environmental workflows.
All of these new OGC working groups offer opportunities for universities, researchorganizations, professional organizations, businesses and government agencies to bringrequirements and expertise to the task of developing standards that will be important inenvironmental activities related to each of these domains. All of these new domain
standards will have implications for environmental research, business and policy.

11. A call for a sustainable development IT standards research agenda
In each of the domains described above, domain experts brought domain data modelingexpertise into the OGC to create an international standard to benefit a particular
information community. By doing this work in the OGC and by basing the new standards
on the OGC GML, O&M and coverage standards, they have made it much easier for
developers and users in their domains to integrate their data with other geospatial dataand processing resources.
Many other domains have yet to realize data encoding standards based on international
data model coordination and international geospatial technical standards. The authors
suggest a coordinated high-level analysis of what needs to be measured andcommunicated to enable collaborative and effective management of our interactions with
Earth systems. The authors therefore call for a research agenda that focuses on
identifying information types needed for sustainable development. Such an analysis willraise awareness, across all the environmental domains, of the need for and the path
toward better communication of environmental data and better use of information
technology in the service of sustainable development.

12. A call for leadership
The OGC and its many partner organizations encourage qualified and interested
individuals, organizations, government agencies and businesses to join in global domainfocused efforts to develop coordinated agendas for environmental standards research,development, implementation and use.

88

http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/landinfradwg89

http://www.opengeospatial.org/pressroom/pressreleases/2042

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Key to success is visionary leadership. Experience with OGC working groups has shown
the importance of visionary and committed individuals who decide to lead a standards
effort. If one person in one OGC member organization can persuade member
representatives from two other OGC members to join as co-initiators, a Domain Working
Group or Standards Working Group can be formed. If their idea is sound, then papers,
presentations, and outreach by OGC staff attract other organizations to the effort. The
group's progress is reported out to the world, the group's issues are brought into testbeds,
candidate standards are drafted, tested, vetted and approved, and soon the standard takes
on a life of its own. The need for leadership remains, but after a time new business
opportunities and policy imperatives drive participation, implementations anddeployments forward.
Every domain – weather, aviation, geology, etc. is different, with different associations,
history, culture, market realities and so on. For domains that are not well organized andnot accustomed to collaboration, progress is slower, but sometimes a major government
agency or charitable foundation can fund participation by companies, universities andothers to "prime the pump." Those who seize on the opportunity provided by institutional
support quickly become recognized in their domains as leaders and visionaries. We live
in an age that recognizes the value of networking and the value of those who build
networks.
We also live in an age when people are waking up to the importance of sustainable
development. The authors hope that this paper will encourage environmentally mindedresearchers, policy makers and business people to help develop the standards-based
interoperability framework that enables the kind of communication they need toaccomplish their missions in the Anthropocene era.

About the Authors:
Bart De Lathouwer is Director, Interoperability Programs, Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
He is based in Belgium.
Mike Jackson is Emeritus Professor of Geospatial Science at the Nottingham Geospatial
Institute http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/ngi/ at the University of Nottingham.
Lance McKee is Senior Staff Writer for the OGC.

13. References
Cyberarchitecture for Geosciences White Paper (OGC 11-145), George Percivall, 20 May
2014 – https://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=46388.

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OGC Sensor Web Enablement: Overview and High Level Architecture (OGC 07-165r1)
Mike Botts, George Percivall, Carl Reed, John Davidson, 2 April 2013 –http://docs.opengeospatial.org/wp/07-165r1/
See the OGC Standards web page (http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards) for other
OGC documents and links to those documents.

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