The “SymCore” standard will increase consistency between different maps by defining agreed upon symbology rules.

15 October 2020: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership has approved the Symbology Conceptual Model: Core Part (SymCore) as a new OGC Standard.

The Symbology Conceptual Core Model (SymCore) is the basis for defining symbology rules for the portrayal of geographic data. SymCore is modular & extensible (one core model with many extensions), and encoding agnostic (one symbology model can have many encodings). The core model is designed to be extensible so that new capabilities can efficiently be defined and used.

The modular, extensible and agnostic characteristics contribute to a new approach to portrayal in order to:

• Provide the flexibility required to achieve adequate cartographic styling while meeting the needs of a variety of information communities, for example aviation symbols, weather symbols, thematic maps, etc.; and
• Achieve high level styling interoperability without encoding dependencies.

Existing OGC standards for styling and symbology can only be used with a few OGC standards such as an OGC Web Map Service, so a more general and portable symbology model is required for use across the OGC standards baseline. SymCore fulfills this requirement.

As with any OGC standard, the open Symbology Conceptual Core Model (SymCore) standard is free to download and implement. Interested parties can view and download the Symbology Conceptual Core Model (SymCore) Standard via ogc.org.

About OGC
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 500 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.
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