27 November 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks comments on the possible adoption of the jointly developed OGC/W3C Time Ontology in OWL (OWL-Time) and Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) Ontology candidate standards. Both are published as W3C Recommendations and were prepared by the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group (SDWWG) - a previous joint W3C/OGC project now succeeded by the Spatial Data on the Web Interest Group. OGC is now seeking comment as to whether these documents should also be approved as OGC standards.

OWL-Time is an OWL-2 DL ontology of temporal concepts for describing the temporal properties of resources in the world or described in Web pages. The ontology provides a vocabulary for expressing and sharing facts about topological (ordering) relations among instants and intervals, together with information about durations, and about temporal position including date-time information. Time positions and durations may be expressed using either the conventional (Gregorian) calendar and clock or using another temporal reference system such as Unix-time, geologic time, or different calendars.

The Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology is used for describing actuators, sensors and their observations, the involved procedures, the studied features of interest, the samples used to do so, and the observed properties. SSN follows a horizontal and vertical modularization architecture by including a lightweight but self-contained core ontology called SOSA (Sensor, Observation, Sample, and Actuator) for its elementary classes and properties. With their different scope and different degrees of axiomatization, SSN and SOSA are able to support a wide range of applications and use cases, including satellite imagery, large-scale scientific monitoring, industrial and household infrastructures, social sensing, citizen science, observation-driven ontology engineering, and the Web of Things.

OGC is seeking public input on if it should adopt these documents as OGC Standards.

The Time Ontology in OWL and Semantic Sensor Network Ontology W3C Recommendations are available for download from W3C: Time Ontology in OWL (OWL-Time) and Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) Ontology. Comments are due by 27 December 2018 and should be submitted via the method outlined on the two candidate standards’ request page.

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 525 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 within any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at www.opengeospatial.org.

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