Watch the Overview Video


Context

OGC is globally known for its proven widely implemented open standards. The OGC open consensus-based standards development process has evolved to move at the pace of innovation, with constant input from technology forecasting, practical prototyping, real-world testing, certification and compliance and community engagement. Today we are revolutionizing how geospatial/location information is shared, accessed, integrated, and analyzed via the OGC’s revolutionary APIs- the building blocks for location information.

OGC APIs are designed to make it easy for ANYONE to provide and use geospatial data on the web, and to integrate this data with ANY other type of information. These Standards build upon the legacy of the OGC Web Service Standards (WMS, WFS, WCS, WPS, etc.), but define resource-centric APIs that take advantage of modern web development practices. This web page provides information on these Standards in a consolidated location.

These Standards are being constructed as "building blocks" that can be used to assemble novel APIs for web access to geospatial content. The building blocks are defined not only by the requirements of the Standards specified in the OGC's Standards Program, but also through interoperability prototyping and testing in the OGC's Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Program.
To learn more about using the OGC APIs please view our guidelines here.

The OGC API Roadmap highlights the current and planned standards efforts as well as related extensions to those standards. The roadmap is available for the public to view. Request access here.

For more information on the OGC API standards, please contact us using the form below.

To find out more about the OGC please visit our public site. OGC Logo

What's New

OGC API standards in the news

OGC Membership approves the OGC API – Tiles – Part 1: Core specification as official OGC Standard

The OGC API - Tiles Standard defines building blocks for creating Web APIs that support the retrieval of geospatial information as tiles. Different forms of geospatial information are supported, such as tiles of vector features (“vector tiles”), coverages, maps (or imagery) and other types of geospatial information. The OGC API - Tiles standard is an alternative to the OGC Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) Standard.


More Info

API Prospectus
OGC APIs prospectus available

Are you interested in supporting OGC APIs, or would like to learn more about them? Be a part of OGC's evolution of standards. Download our prospectus now.

API Roadmap
New OGC API Roadmap

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) invites the general public to review the OGC API Roadmap. The roadmap has been moved to Productboard, a product management platform. Access to the roadmap can be requested here.

APIs for the Web

Features

Approved Standard

OGC API - Features - Part 1: Core and Part 2: Coordinate Reference Systems by Reference are both publicly available.

More InfoGitHub repo
Common

OGC API - Common provides those elements shared by most or all of the OGC API standards to ensure consistency across the family. The candidate standard will soon be released for public review.

More InfoGitHub repo
EDR

Approved Standard

Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) API provides a family of lightweight interfaces to access Environmental Data resources. Each resource addressed by an EDR API maps to a defined query pattern.

More InfoGitHub repo
Tiles

Approved Standard

OGC API - Tiles provides extended functionality to other OGC API Standards to deliver vector tiles, map tiles, and other tiled data.

More InfoGitHub repo
Processes

Approved Standard

OGC API - Processes allows for processing tools to be called and combined from many sources and applied to data in other OGC API resources though a simple API.

More InfoGitHub repo
Coverages

OGC API - Coverages allows discovery, visualization and query of complex raster stacks and data cubes.

More InfoGitHub repo
Records

OGC API - Records updates OGC’s Catalog Services for the Web by building on the simple access to content in OGC API - Features.

More InfoGitHub repo
Styles

The OGC API - Styles defines a Web API that enables map servers, clients as well as visual style editors, to manage and fetch styles...

More InfoGitHub repo
Maps

OGC API - Maps offers a modern approach to the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) standard for provision map and raster content.

More InfoGitHub repo
DGGS

Enables applications to organise and access data arranged according to a Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS).

More InfoGitHub repo
Routes

Enables applications to request routes in a manner independent of the underlying routing data set, routing engine or algorithm.

More InfoGitHub repo
Photo by pepe nero on Unsplash
Joins

OGC API - Joins supports the joining of data, from multiple sources, with feature collections or directly with other input files.

More InfoGitHub repo
Photo by kimi lee on Unsplash
Moving Features

OGC API - Moving Features defines an API that provides access to data representing features that move as rigid bodies.

More InfoGitHub repo
Image by Brecht Corbeel on Unsplash
3D GeoVolumes

OGC API - 3D GeoVolumes facilitates efficient discovery of and access to 3D content in multiple formats based on a space-centric perspective.

More InfoGitHub repo

 

APIs for the IoT

Photo by kimi lee on Unsplash
SensorThings

The OGC SensorThings API provides an open, geospatial-enabled and unified way to interconnect Internet of Things (IoT) devices, data, and applications over the Web.

More InfoGitHub repo

 

Compliance Testing and Certification

The executable test suite for Parts 1 and 2 of the OGC API - Features Standard 1.0 is now available.

The executable test suite for the OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval Standard 1.0 is now available.

The executable test suite for the OGC API - Processes Standard 1.0 is now available in Beta.

More information about Compliance certification is on the OGC website.

Sprints

OGC continues to use special events, hackathons, and sprints to validate the OGC API draft candidate standards as those standards evolve. By including the broadest possible selection of stakeholders, OGC can be confident that when the standards are published, those standards have already withstood testing and suitability evaluation.

  • September 2022

    September 2022 Joint OGC and ISO/TC211 Code Sprint (Hybrid event)

    This code sprint took place from 14th to 16th of September at the Geovation Hub in London, UK. The code sprint covered OGC API Records, ISO 19115, JSON-FG, and STAC. Hybrid event.


    Registration closed

  • November 2022

    The Web Mapping Code Sprint (Hybrid event)

    This code sprint will take place from 29th November to 1st December in Brussels, Belgium. The code sprint will cover OGC API Maps, OGC API Tiles, and OGC API Styles. Hybrid event.


    Registration closed

OGC Web API guidelines

The OGC Architecture Board (OAB) considers architecture consistency and life cycle management of the OGC standards baseline. The OAB has developed OGC Web API Guidelines to be followed when building Web API standards. These guidelines are not mandatory or policy, rather their purpose is to assist standards developers to use common patterns and better align their efforts.

OGC API Videos

Click on a video below to begin viewing it.

video
Getting Geospatial Data on the Web
video
OGC APIs: The Building Blocks for Location
video
OGC API Overview and Implementation
video
OGC API update - presented to the ESIP - November 2020
video
FOSS4G 2021 - OGC APIs: background, current state, what's next?
video
Apidays LIVE interface 2021 - Spatially enabling Web APIs through OGC Standards By Gobe Hobona
video
ApacheCon 2021 - OGC APIs: Web API Standards for Handling and Exchanging Location Data - Gobe Hobona, Scott Simmons

Playlists:

Related Blog Posts

View all OGC API related blog posts.

Bringing STAC into OGC
Bringing STAC into OGC

Since their beginning, the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification and OGC API - Features have been evolving together and continually aligning. This post explains the relationship between STAC, OGC API - Features, and OGC itself.

Read blog
A New Look for the Portrayal of Geospatial Information
A New Look for the Portrayal of Geospatial Information

Together, the Open Portrayal Framework and the SymCore standard define a modern and modular approach to portrayal based on the intent to have many extensions from a common conceptual model and many encodings of those extensions.

Read blog
Building the Building Blocks for the Future of Location: The November 2022 OGC Web Mapping Code Sprint
Building the Building Blocks for the Future of Location: The November 2022 OGC Web Mapping Code Sprint

Held in Brussels (and online) on November 29 to December 1, 2022, the code sprint supported the development of OGC API Standards, the building blocks for location that standardize many of the new capabilities available to web mapping applications. The sprint covered OGC APIs for Maps, Tiles, and Styles, and SymCore.

Read blog
Reflections on the 2022 Joint OGC & ISO Code Sprint - The Metadata Code Sprint
Reflections on the 2022 Joint OGC & ISO Code Sprint - The Metadata Code Sprint

Held in London (and online) on September 14-16, 2022, the second OGC & ISO joint code sprint, nicknamed the The Metadata Code Sprint, served to accelerate the support of open geospatial standards that relate to geospatial metadata and catalogs. The code sprint covered OGC API - Records, JSON-FG, STAC, and ISO 19115 metadata.

Read blog
Building an Interoperable Routing Engine (Part 1)
Building an Interoperable Routing Engine (Parts 1 & 2)

The goal of the Open Routing API Pilot was to develop an API that allowed requests for routes from different users in an interoperable and standardized way via Web protocols.

Read blog
The 2022 Joint OGC OSGeo ASF Code Sprint - How it went!
The 2022 Joint OGC OSGeo ASF Code Sprint - How it went!

OGC, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), and the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) held their second joint code sprint in March this year, which introduced several exciting changes not seen during the 2021 Joint Code Sprint. Over a period of 3 days, the sprint participants collaborated on a variety of coding and documentation tasks, and held discussions to facilitate coordination.

Read blog
The OGC Environmental Data Retrieval API: simple access to big data
The OGC Environmental Data Retrieval API: simple access to big data

Another step towards the creation of the OGC Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) API Standard has been completed: the successful testing of some of the API’s capabilities during the OGC Environmental Data Retrieval API Sprint.

Read blog
OPF Hands
Open Portrayal Framework

Sharing Styles and Updating Tiles for a New Generation of Maps

Read blog
OGC APIs blog
OGC APIs and the evolution of OGC standards
Read blog

Supporting Documents

OGC and other documents supporting OGC API efforts.

The OGC API standards rely heavily upon fundamental concepts expressed in OGC White Papers and research and testing performed in OGC's Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Program activities and documented in Engineering Reports. OGC members are also specifying best practices for the use of web APIs and often share that guidance. The documents below provide some background to OGC API efforts.

Joint OGC and ISO Code Sprint 2022 Summary Engineering Report Joint OGC OSGeo ASF Code Sprint 2022 Summary Engineering Report July 2021 OGC API Code Sprint Summary Engineering Report May 2021 OGC API Code Sprint Summary Engineering Report Joint OGC OSGeo ASF Code Sprint 2021 Summary Engineering Report OGC API – Common and OGC API – Features Sprint 2020: Summary Engineering Report OGC API – Maps Sprint 2020: Summary Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: OpenAPI Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: Data Centric Security Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: OpenAPI Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: DGGS and DGGS API Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: Data Access and Processing Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: Data Access and Processing API Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: Machine Learning Training Data ER OGC Testbed-16: Aviation Engineering Report OGC Testbed-16: Earth Observation Application Packages with Jupyter Notebooks OGC Vector Tiles Pilot 2: Summary Engineering Report OGC Vector Tiles Pilot 2: Tile Set Metadata Engineering Report OGC Vector Tiles Pilot 2: Vector Tiles Filtering Language Engineering Report FGDC OGC Application Programming Interface Interoperability Assessment OGC API Prospectus Testbed-15 Styles API Engineering Report Testbed-15 Maps and Tiles API Engineering Report Testbed-15 Images and Changes Set API Engineering Report OGC Open Geospatial APIs - White Paper Joint OGC-W3C Spatial Data on the Web Best Practices OGC Testbed-14: Next Generation Web APIs - WFS 3.0 Engineering Report OGC Testbed-14 Next Generation APIs: Complex Feature Handling Engineering Report OGC Testbed-14: Application Package Engineering Report OGC Testbed-14: ADES & EMS Results and Best Practices Engineering Report OGC Testbed-14: Swath Coverage Engineering Report OGC Vector Tiles Pilot: WFS 3.0 Vector Tiles Extension Engineering Report Vector Tiles Pilot Extension Engineering Report API strategie voor de Nederlandse overheid (section in English)
Show more +


Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Program activities

The OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation Program provides a world-recognized process for users of geospatial technology to collaborate and share the advancement of technologies for future enterprise architectures.

If you have an idea for an initiative or simply have a question or comment, contact Ingo Simonis, Chief Technology Innovation Officer.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

The following are frequently asked questions in relation to OGC API Standards.

  • Q: I would like to migrate from a Web Feature Service (WFS) to OGC API Standards. Which OGC API Standard should I implement?
    A: OGC API - Features
  • Q: I would like to migrate from a MetOcean Web Coverage Service (WCS) to OGC API Standards. Which OGC API Standard should I implement?
    A: OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval
  • Q: I would like to migrate from a Web Processing Service (WPS) to OGC API Standards. Which OGC API Standard should I implement?
    A: OGC API - Processes
  • Q: I would like to migrate from a Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) to OGC API Standards. Which OGC API Standard should I implement?
    A: OGC API - Tiles
  • Q: I would like to migrate from a Sensor Observation Service (SOS) to OGC API Standards. Which OGC API Standard should I implement?
    A: OGC SensorThings API

Use of OpenAPI in legacy OGC standards

While the OGC API standards are being developed in concert around common core elements, some older OGC web service standards have been described using OpenAPI. Examples of these legacy enhancements are found below.

UK Hydrographic Office Web Map Service (WMS) for Electronic Navigational Charts Prototype OpenAPI definition for Web Map Tile Service (WMTS)

Get In Touch

Do you consent to the use of cookies on this site?

Set Specific Preferences