Vector Tiles Pilot, Phase 2 will advance interoperability for vector tiles using established OGC standards and the latest OGC APIs - and help geospatial enterprises create custom maps for seamless online/offline use.
9 September 2019: After a successful Vector Tiles Pilot in 2018, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites developers to its Vector Tiles Pilot, Phase 2 (VTP-2). The goal of the initiative is to help geospatial enterprises create custom maps for seamless online/offline use. The Pilot will achieve this by enhancing established OGC standards, and extending the latest OGC APIs.
VTP-2 puts emphasis on providing a smooth online-offline experience for users. In the ideal case, a user working with vector map tiles experiences only minimal changes in performance, display or interaction when transitioning from online to offline situations. This will allow geospatial enterprises to better support disaster response, humanitarian relief, and other scenarios where network availability is limited to specific areas or time periods.
To support these objectives, VTP-2 targets several key work items: A simple metadata description for vector tiles so users can share, find and use vector tiles online or offline; a filtering language for OGC APIs and services, so users can get just the vector map tiles they need; online/offline symbol sharing so vector tiles can support easy-to-understand basemaps; and support for map projections other than the traditional “Web Mercator”.
VTP-2 builds on the success of phase 1 of the Vector Tiles Pilot (VTP-1), which successfully developed, delivered and demonstrated vector tile extensions for OGC WMTS, OGC API - Features (formerly named WFS 3.0), GeoPackage, and a prototype Styles API in collaboration with industry partners. Related work is also being advanced in the Testbed-15 Open Portrayal Framework (OPF) thread where a framework is being developed to easily share styles and quickly update map tiles from hundreds of new sources for a new generation of maps.
This Initiative is being conducted under OGC’s Innovation Program, the research and development (R&D) laboratory of OGC. Under OGC’s Innovation Program, sponsors and OGC members come together to address geospatial IT challenges in an agile and cooperative manner. Since 1999, more than 120 successful initiatives have taken place, from in-kind interoperability experiments run by working group members, to hackathons, pilots, and multi-million-dollar testbeds with hundreds of participants.
More information on the Pilot, including the Call for Participation, is available on the OGC Vector Tiles Pilot Phase 2 Initiative Webpage. Responses are due by October 18th, 2019.
Participation is open only to OGC Members. However, proposals from non-members will be considered provided that a completed application for OGC membership (or a letter of intent to become a member) is submitted prior to (or with) the proposal.
About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 businesses, government agencies, research organizations, and universities driven to make geospatial (location) information and services FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
OGC’s member-driven consensus process creates royalty free, publicly available geospatial standards. Existing at the cutting edge, OGC actively analyzes and anticipates emerging tech trends, and runs an agile, collaborative Research and Development (R&D) lab that builds and tests innovative prototype solutions to members' use cases.
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