Testbed-16 will provide funding for participants to undertake R&D to further advance the Earth Observation Cloud Architecture, Data Integration & Analytics, and Modeling & Packaging.

23 December 2019: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites interested organizations to respond to the Call for Participation (CFP) for OGC’s Testbed-16 Innovation Initiative. Responses are due February 9, 2020.

Testbed-16 will undertake research & development (R&D) in real-world environments to further advance technologies falling under the following 3 threads:

• Thread 1: Earth Observation Clouds (EOC)*
  • Earth Observation Application Packages with Jupyter Notebooks
  • Data Access and Processing API for Geospatial Data
  • Discrete Global Grid System
• Thread 2: Data Integration & Analytics (DIA)
  • Aviation
  • Machine Learning
  • Full Motion Video to Moving Features
  • Analysis Ready Data
• Thread 3: Modeling And Packaging (MAP)
  • Data Centric Security
  • Federated Security
  • GeoPackage
  • OpenAPI

* For useful background information on the EOC Architecture developed in OGC initiatives over the last 2 years, see the previously issued OGC Earth Observation Applications Pilot CFP.

OGC Testbeds are annual, fast-paced, multi-vendor, collaborative efforts to define, design, develop, and test candidate interface and encoding specifications. As an OGC Innovation Program activity, OGC Testbeds emphasize the evaluation of what should be in a specification, how the specification should act, and how specification-based software should respond. The draft specifications developed in Testbeds eventually move into the OGC Standards Program, where they are reviewed, revised, and potentially approved as new international open standards.

Each year, OGC Testbeds integrate requirements and ideas from a number of different sponsors. This pooling of ideas and requirements allows the leveraging of symbiotic effects and makes the overall initiative more attractive to both participants and sponsoring organizations. Work on Testbed-16 commenced with the elicitation of sponsor requirements in May of 2019.

The outcomes of Testbed-16 are expected to shape the future of geospatial software development and data publication. The Testbed sponsors are supporting this vision with cost-sharing funds to partially offset the costs associated with development, engineering, and demonstration of these outcomes. This offers selected participants a unique opportunity to recoup a portion of their initiative expenses.

Organizations selected to participate in Testbed-16 will develop prototype solutions based on the sponsors’ use cases, requirements, and scenarios. These are described in detail in the Testbed-16 CFP. Participants’ prototype solutions will implement existing OGC standards as well as new prototype interface and encoding specifications introduced or developed in Testbed-16. Prototype specifications may ultimately become official, member approved OGC standards, revisions to existing OGC standards, or best practices for using OGC standards.

OGC Testbeds are part of OGC's Innovation Program, a collaborative, agile, and hands-on prototyping and engineering environment where sponsors and OGC members come together to address location interoperability challenges while validating international open standards.

Anyone interested in learning more about, or participating in, Testbed-16 should contact Scott Serich, Director Innovation Programs (techdesk@opengeospatial.org). 

Further information is available on the Testbed-16 webpage. The Call For Participation is available from the OGC Portal in HTML and PDF formats. The method for submitting proposals is outlined in the CFP document. The submission deadline is February 9, 2020. The project will start with a kick-off meeting scheduled for early April, 2020.

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.
OGC members together form a global forum of experts and communities that use location to connect people with technology and improve decision-making at all levels. OGC is committed to creating a sustainable future for us, our children, and future generations.

Visit ogc.org for more info on our work.

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