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Data Cubes for geospatial information provide the means to integrate observations and other types of geospatial data for use in multiple applications through simplified access and efficient analytics. Acknowledging that diverse implementations already exist, this Community Best Practice, developed by the OGC members and supported by at least 6 independent implementations listed in the document, defines requirements for a core Geospatial Coverage Data Cube infrastructure and guidelines for enhancements and extensions to the basic core. With this paper and other activities, OGC is contributing to the advancement of Data Cubes more generally and as a foundation for federations of Data Cubes for geospatial information.

The necessity of open standards for effective sharing and use of remote sensing continues to receive increasing emphasis in policies of agencies and projects around the world. Coordination on the development of open standards for geospatial information is a vital step to insure that the technical standards are ready to support the policy objectives. The mission of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is to advance development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability. To accomplish this mission, OGC serves as the global forum for the collaboration of geospatial data / solution providers and users. Photogrammetry and remote sensing are sources of the largest and most complex geospatial information. Some of the most mature OGC standards for remote sensing include the Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) standards, the Web Coverage Service (WCS) suite of standards, encodings such as NetCDF, GMLJP2 and GeoPackage, and the soon to be approved Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) standard. In collaboration with ISPRS, OGC working with government, research and industrial organizations continue to advance the state of geospatial standards for full use of photogrammetry and remote sensing.

UAVs are a disruptive technology bringing new geographic data and information to many application domains. UASs are similar to other geographic imagery systems so existing frameworks are applicable. But the diversity of UAVs as platforms along with the diversity of available sensors are presenting challenges in the processing and creation of geospatial products. Efficient processing and dissemination of the data is achieved using software and systems that implement open standards. The challenges identified point to the need for use of existing standards and extending standards. Results from the use of the OGC Sensor Web Enablement set of standards are presented. Next steps in the progress of UAVs and UASs may follow the path of open data, open source and open standards.

IoT, EO and the Web are providing ever increasing amounts of geospatial information. In order to access and integrate the data using geospatial and temporal methods, standards are needed. This paper provides a summary of current capabilities and recent advancements in standards from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) that provide these capabilities.

Although the question of who pays for open data is important (“Who will pay for public access to research data?”, F. Berman and V. Cerf, Policy Forum, 9 August, p. [616][1]), a greater challenge lies in implementing the institutional and cultural changes required before data from government-sponsored research can be openly shared. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has ordered U.S. federal agencies to formulate plans to share federally funded science data ([ 1 ][2]). This reflects a fundamental shift in the social contract between scientists and society. While seeking to strengthen science, the order also seeks better use of data to promote economic innovation, improve cross-disciplinary efforts, and address “grand challenge” societal problems such as global climate change and urban violence. The OSTP memo correctly notes that public availability of atmospheric data enabled commercial weather services and severe weather prediction. Yet many data, tools, and models in the geosciences are held by a mix of individual investigators, national data centers, university-based initiatives, and commercial labs, embedded in institutional arrangements that actively reward holding onto data and maximizing individual outcomes in a competitive environment. NSF's EarthCube project, a long-term strategic initiative to build the cyber infrastructure for integrating data, tools, and models in the geosciences, illustrates the challenges and benefits of community engagement and institutional alignment ([ 2 ][3]). The push for open data goes beyond the question of who pays. It challenges science to create a more cooperative culture that aligns credit and rewards with sharing data, tools, and models. 1. [↵][4] OSTP, Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research ([www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research][5]). 2. [↵][6] EarthCube ([www.earthcube.org][7]). [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1241625 [2]: #ref-1 [3]: #ref-2 [4]: #xref-ref-1-1 "View reference 1 in text" [5]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/22/expanding-public-access-results-federally-funded-research [6]: #xref-ref-2-1 "View reference 2 in text" [7]: http://www.earthcube.org

This paper describes how the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) are individually and collaboratively strengthening worldwide ability for agencies to manage the disasters lifecycle. The Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) of GEO has, through an agile development process, deployed and tested advanced information systems for Earth Observations based on interoperability arrangements. In particular, AIP has focused on several disaster management scenarios resulting in an architecture that has improved the ready viability and usability of data for disasters. CEOS is constructing a reference architecture, intended to streamline access to satellite data and services for disaster management and risk assessment. The CEOS approach aims to support disaster management activities with satellite information in a holistic fashion, taking account of their overlaps and interdependencies. Jointly GEO and CEOS are now working to align the approaches for disaster management to describe enterprise components and improve understanding of contributed systems and their roles. The coordination has lead to refinements of the Disaster Management Scenario via further implementation in AIP-5. By collaborating via the CEOS working groups and the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) communities of practice, these efforts are intended to engage the international community focused on disaster management and risk assessment to fully utilize remote sensing resources for societal benefit.

Researchers face increasingly large repositories of geospatial data stored in different locations and in various formats. To address this problem, the Open Geospatial Consortium and the Open Grid Forum are collaborating to develop standards for distributed geospatial computing.

DataFed is a distributed web-services-based computing environment for accessing, processing, and rendering environmental data in support of air quality management and science. The flexible, adaptive environment facilitates the access and flow of atmospheric data from provider to users by enabling the creation of user-driven data processing value chains. The approach of DataFed is mediation between users and data providers. DataFed non-intrusively wraps datasets for access by standards-based Web services. The mediator software, composed of Web services, provides homogeneous data views (e.g., geospatial, time views) using a global multi-dimensional data model. Application software written using Web services are data browsers, including Google Earth, and analysis tools for distributed AQ data. Its federated data pool consists of over 100 datasets and the tools have been applied in several air pollution projects. From the point of view of GEOSS, DataFed contributes air quality data (as services) to the shared data pool through the GEOSS Common Infrastructure. It also hosts a decision support system (DSS) in the societal benefit area of air quality. The developers of DataFed actively participate in the GEOSS process included work with Architecture and Data Committee (ADC) and the User Interface Committee (UIC) as well as in interoperability experiments.

International audience; Today an experience developer must choose tools for authoring AR experiences based on many factors including ease of use, performance across a variety of platforms, reach and discoverability and cost. The commercially viable options are organized in closed technology silos (beginning with SDKs). A publisher of experiences must choose one or develop for multiple viewing applications, then promote one or more application to the largest possible audience. Developers of applications must then maintain the customized viewing application over time across multiple platforms or have the experience (and the application) expire at the end of a campaign

The Group on Earth Observations, GEO, has identified the need to improve disaster risk management by providing timely information relevant to the full disaster management cycle of mitigation, preparedness/warning, response and recovery. The Committee on Earth Observing Satellites, CEOS, as the satellite arm of GEO, has recognized the important role that remote sensing contributes to all phases of the disaster management cycle. Activities to address the satellite information needs and gap analysis for disaster management systems are ongoing. This paper reports on results from two such activities, the southern Africa Flood and Health Pilot addressing annual floods in Namibia, and the GEOSS Architecture for Disasters analysis to enhance the use of satellite data. Direct interaction with Namibian hydrologists to experiment with satellite and in situ data products has helped inform the disasters architecture, providing lessons learned and best practices for the GEO societal benefit areas.

The GEOSS Future Products Workshop was held March 26-28, 2013 at NOAA Science Center, Silver Spring, MD, USA with participation of more than 50 people from different sectors in the private industry, academia, government agencies. Organizations were from USA, Europe, Africa and Brazil. This workshop provided a unique opportunity to learn how GEOSS as a platform makes all sorts of sensor and model data available in an interoperable manner. Data streaming from in-situ and remote sensing sensors (Sensor Web), models (Model Web) offers a huge potential to generate a wide portfolio of on-demand and near real time products. This multi-day workshop will feature: invited speakers and contributed positions; breakout sessions to exchange views and provide proposed approaches; with summaries posted on the web. Recommendations from the workshop are provided in the following categories: o Use methods of science to guide use of observations and predictions. o The utility of Sensor Web has been shown; development is needed to meet remaining challenges. o The Model Web vision should be advanced with a short-term plan. o Interaction of Sensor Web and Model Web brings benefits beyond their individual use. o Further develop the understanding of the diversity of GEOSS Users o Authentication and Interoperability issues can be advanced with support by SIF and AIP o Go beyond the current state of GCI to meet expectations o Capacity Building activities can improve how GEOSS is used o Improve public messaging about GEO

This paper describes how GEOSS and CEOS are individually and collaboratively strengthening the world's ability to manage the disasters lifecycle. The Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) of GEOSS has, through an agile development process, deployed and tested advanced information systems for Earth Observations based on interoperability arrangements. In particular AIP has focused on several Disaster Management Scenarios resulting in an architecture that has improved the ready viability and usability of data for disasters. CEOS is constructing a reference architecture, intended to streamline access to satellite data and services for disaster management. The CEOS approach aims to support disaster management activities with satellite information in a holistic fashion, taking account of their overlaps and interdependencies. Jointly GEOSS and CEOS are now working to align the approaches for Disaster Management to describe enterprise components and improve understanding of contributed systems and their roles. The coordination will lead to refinements of the Disaster Management Scenario via further implementation in AIP-5. By collaborating via the CEOS working groups and GEOSS communities of practice, these efforts are intended to engage the international community focused on disaster management to fully utilize remote sensing resources for societal benefit.

Presents a collection of slides covering the following topics: GEOSS interoperability arrangements; drought index use scenario; global drought monitor configuration; water ontology; water information services; DIAS ontology browser; and land surface module.

Connecting our world with accessible networks is scaling to trillions of everyday objects. The Internet of Things, Pervasive Computing, Sensor Web are research names for this development. Planetary Skin, Smarter Planet and CeNSE are several corporate names. The Internet will be augmented with mobile machine-to-machine communications and ad-hoc local network technologies. At the network nodes, information about objects will come from barcodes, RFIDs, and sensors. The location of all objects will be known.This workshop seeks to explore the role of location in expanding GeoWeb to an Internet of Things. The workshop seeks presentations on functions enabled by geographic location and to location relative to surrounding objects. Most of the objects will be indoor in a 3D setting. The workshop also seeks presentations on relevant technologies such as location determination, geocoding, schemas for points of interest, ad-hoc network formation based on location, processing of information of the objects to detect phenomena of interest and location based services. Technology standards will be important for interoperability at this scale, e.g., OpenLS, CityGML, and Sensor Web Enablement standards from the OGC.

Web services provide users ever better methods to access and use Earth Observation data. Development of a web services architecture for the Global Earth Observing System of Systems was conducted using an evolutionary development process that depended on standards for geospatial web services. Standards for geospatial web services provide interfaces that can be scaled to global deployment. The GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot defined an evolutionary development process and reusable architecting methods for applying web services to a global scale system of systems for Earth observations. ISO/IEC, OGC and other standards are used by the AIP architecture to meet the objectives of GEOSS to enable comprehensive, coordinated and sustained observation of the Earth and also efficient publication and use of the collected information.

Discoveries in the geosciences are increasingly taking place across traditional disciplinary boundaries. The EarthCube program, a community-driven project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, is developing an information- and tool-sharing framework to bridge between disciplines and unlock the modern geosciences' transformative potential.

Geospatial informatics has achieved a level of maturity that is bringing spatial data to ever more applications. Examples include web mapping, 3-D browsers, spatial data infrastructures, sensor webs, and location based services. Key principles to this achievement include: robust open source and proprietary implementations; consistent geospatial concepts across implementations; and standards adopted through open consensus offered freely as in free beer on the web.Several applications are now ripe for rapid development based on this established baseline of standards, software implementations and deployed systems. The value and use of geospatial information will continue to increase through various systems-of-systems of geospatial services. Beyond traditional SDI communities the Geoscience communities are rapidly developing information systems using OGC and other open standards. The application of geospatial to Business Intelligence is poised for phenomenal growth. The emergence of mobile Internet will result in the second generation of location-based services.