OGC APIs

What are OGC APIs?

OGC API standards define modular API building blocks to spatially enable Web APIs in a consistent way. The OGC API family of standards is organized by resource type.

See https://ogcapi.ogc.org/ for more details.

Which OGC APIs is GeotechIE considering for geotechnics?

GeotechIE is proposing to rely on:

• OGC SensorThings API for the provision of Observations, Measurements and Sampling description.
• OGC API Features for the provision of observed features like Borehole, TrialPit, MaterialSample, but also interpreted featured like a GeologicUnit, Fault, HydrogeoUnit, etc...

OGC SensorThings API

The OGC SensorThings API provides an open, geospatial-enabled and unified way to interconnect the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, data, and applications over the Web. At a high level the OGC SensorThings API provides two main functionalities and each function is handled by a part. The two parts are the Sensing part and the Tasking part. The Sensing part provides a standard way to manage and retrieve observations and metadata from heterogeneous IoT sensor systems. The Tasking part is planned as a future work activity and will be defined in a separate document as the Part II of the SensorThings API.

See https://ogcapi.ogc.org/sensorthings/ for more details.

OGC API Features

The OGC API Features specifies the fundamental API building blocks for interacting with features. The spatial data community uses the term ‘feature’ for things in the real world that are of interest.

See https://ogcapi.ogc.org/features/ for more details.

OGC APIs & INSPIRE

Both OGC SensorThingsAPI and OGC API Features have been assessed as suitable to implement the INSPIRE Directive.

See:

• Extending INSPIRE to the Internet of Things through SensorThings API
• INSPIRE SensorThings API Good Practice
• Also additional materials are available at https://datacoveeu.github.io/API4INSPIRE