OGC Calls for Participation in its Indian Interoperability Plugfest

The Department of Science and Technology (DST), under Government of India, is interested in planning and convening an Indian OGC Interoperability Plugfest. The focus of the plugfest is to better support the National Programs on Smart Cities and National GIS / National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) of the Government of India.

This initiative will create a supportive environment for public private partnerships to actively test their ability to apply OGC standards in improving the ability and efficiency of accessing, sharing, and processing various types of government geospatial data & information, both in support of the above noted programs as well as governance in general.

As discussed in the OGC’s Smart Cities Spatial Information Framework white paper, effective integration of human, physical, and digital systems operating in the built environment holds the promise of improving the quality of life for urban residents, improving the governance of cities, and making cities prosperous, inclusive, sustainable, and resilient. Location is a primary method for organizing urban information and services, and communicating about location requires standards. Open information technology standards are therefore critical to achieving the benefits of spatial communication for Smart Cities.

The plugfest aims to entice vendors to test and demonstrate the ability of their products to access and process the geospatial data & information made available during the plugfest, as well as for them to implement the below mentioned standards. Vendors will provide their solutions for execution of scenarios and demonstration on an in-kind basis during the duration of the plugfest.

The Indian OGC Interoperability Plugfest focuses on an initial set of OGC standards deemed by NSDI under DST to be of critical importance to support advancement of the NSDI for sharing geospatial data & information across the Indian community, including both the public and private sectors. The OGC standards initially proposed for the plugfest include: WMS 1.1.1, WMS 1.3, WMTS 1.0, WFS 1.1.0, WFS 2.0.2, CityGML 2.0, and GML 3.2.1.

Use cases during the plugfest will cover the following topics:

1. Water supply / wastewater management
2. Watershed Management
3. Air Quality
4. Monitoring of communicable diseases

Various Indian national and state government agencies are providing data as are members of the commercial community.

OGC Plugfests benefit participants in the following ways:

• Proven multi-vendor interoperability in your product
• Increased confidence in OGC specifications
• Increased confidence in your implementation
• Reinforce your market claims with action