OpenSearch for Earth Observation Suite of Standards

4 July 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the latest version of the OpenSearch for Earth Observation (OpenSearch-EO) Suite of Standards.

The OpenSearch specification allows syndication of search results that can then be aggregated by one large index. It provides a simple to use description of the search interface, which is called OpenSearch Description document (OSDD). A client (e.g., a browser) can use this description to check which response formats are supported and how a query/filter can be formulated.

This OGC suite of standards specifies an Earth Observation extension to OpenSearch (OpenSearch-EO) that defines query parameters to permit the filtering of search results with fields related to Earth Observation, as well as a search response model supporting different search response encodings. This revision updates the extension primarily to include additional examples for developers. Further, two new encodings of the OpenSearch-EO conceptual model have been developed as new standards: one for encoding metadata using GeoJSON or JSON-LD and one for encoding of responses to OpenSearch-EO queries in GeoJSON or JSON-LD. These standards further integrate with the OGC Standards Baseline in that the GeoJSON responses are provided as OWS Context documents.

OpenSearch-EO specifies a series of parameters that can be used to constrain search results. In short, provision is made to filter results by sensor information, acquisition, processing parameters and other information.

This specification is complementary to the OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions (OGC 10-032 [RD.3]) and recommends its use for spatial and temporal queries especially for EO collection and EO product metadata. Further, it defines a default response encoding based on Atom 1.0/XML [RD.22].

The candidate OpenSearch for Earth Observation suite of standards is available for review and comment on the OGC Portal. Comments are due by 3 August 2018 and should be submitted via the method outlined on the OpenSearch for Earth Observation Suite of Standards’ request page.