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

As the successor to the popular OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) standard, used by thousands of organizations to simplify the processing of their geospatial data, the OGC API - Processes Standard provides a means to build simple-to-understand Web APIs through which complex computational tasks - geoprocessing or otherwise - can be executed. By wrapping a server’s potentially complex data processing tasks into a list of processes available for execution by a client, OGC API - Processes allows the processes designed by geospatial experts to be integrated into simplified workflows and applications, unlocking the value of data and making it accessible to non-experts.

Further, if deployed as a Web API on Cloud hardware, OGC API - Processes allows the execution of these sometimes complex computational tasks to occur on powerful hardware that’s potentially at or near the source of the data, improving efficiency.

In many cases, geospatial (aka location) data, including data from sensors, must be processed before the information can be used. The OGC API - Processes Standard provides a standard interface that simplifies the task of making these computational geospatial processes available as services that can be accessed via the web or private networks. Such services could include well-known processes found in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), specialized processes for spatiotemporal modeling and simulation, or even non-spatial processing tasks.

The OGC API - Processes Standard addresses all of the use cases that were addressed by the WPS Standard, while adding the advantages gained by leveraging the OpenAPI specification and a resource-oriented approach. As such, the OGC API - Processes Standard is a newer and more modern way of programming and interacting with resources over the web that also allows simple integration into existing software packages.