18 January 2016 - The membership of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) seeks public comment on the following two candidate standards: OGC Geospatial User Feedback Conceptual Model (“GUF Model”) and the OGC Geospatial User Feedback XML encoding Standard.

The first candidate standard specifies the structure of a conceptual Geospatial User Feedback data model. Geospatial User Feedback is metadata that is predominantly produced by consumers of geospatial data products as they gain experience with those products. It complements existing metadata in which the creator, publisher or curator of a data product documents dataset characteristics and details of the production workflows that were involved in creating the data. 

The final aim is to collect requirements for data that providers can incorporate into objective quality measures for their products, so that providers are better able to meet the real needs of users and potentially to see new markets for their data.

The GUF Model standard specifies a user quality model that includes a comprehensive set of mechanisms for recording feedback, including free-text comments, an ordinal rating, a publication in the literature or a discovered issue, documenting additional lineage information or emphasizing a significant event that conditions the interpretation of a dataset.

The GUF data model reuses some elements of the ISO 19115-1 (the updated ISO version of the OGC Abstract Specification topic 11) but not the general structure. In selecting these elements, an attempt has been made to optimize future interoperability with developing ISO metadata models. An effort has been made to enable implementations of the GUF model that are as simple as possible, so that the standard can can be implemented in simple user interfaces designed for different users’ different levels of expertise. User Feedback can be provided about both data and metadata.

Encoding standards can be derived from the GUF Conceptual Model Standard, and the GUF XML encoding Standard is such an encoding standard. In the future other encodings can be developed, including interesting alternatives such as the use of JSON-LD.

Both GUF standards are based on the work of 7th Framework program projects called GeoViQua (FP7 FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n°265178) and CHARMe (FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n°312641). What is presented here is the result of maturation of the documents and consensus in the OGC Technical Committee.

The documents for the candidate OGC Geospatial User Feedback Conceptual Model Standard and XML encoding are available for review and comment at ( www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/144). Comments are due by 17 February 2016. 
 
The OGC is an international consortium of more than 515 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.


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