The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is seeking comments on the candidate standard, “OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions”. This document extends the implementation of the popular OpenSearch technologies so that users can take advantage of the geospatial search capabilities enabled by OGC standards.

Different types of content require different types of search engines. OpenSearch provides a standard way of describing search engine capabilities so that they can be leveraged by search client applications like modern Web browsers. The OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions candidate standard provides a very simple way to configure OpenSearch for spatial and temporal queries over distributed repositories of contents having geographic and time properties, and for syndication of these search results in one large index.

Digital resources are becoming more complex and diverse, and this is especially true with respect to sensor data and Web connected sensors. Such data is increasingly becoming discoverable and usable through open interfaces that implement OGC standards, but most of this data remains undiscoverable via popular search engines. The OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions candidate standard specifies how to enhance search engines and configure them to access sensor data servers, so that users can query resource URLs through search combinations of time extents, geographic areas or location names, and likely keywords.

The OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions draft standard includes work undertaken within the GENESI-DR (Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations – Digital Repositories) project funded by the 7th Framework program of the European (EC Grant Agreement no. 212073) and the follow-up project GENESI-DEC (Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations – Digital Earth Community) funded by the same program (Contract nº RI-261623). The document was further supported by the ESA HMA (Heterogeneous Missions Accessibility) initiative and related projects.

The following organizations submitted this document to the Open Geospatial Consortium:

• Terradue Srl
• FGDC
• FortiusOne, Inc.
• EDINA
• Cubewerx Inc.

Download the candidate OGC OpenSearch Geo and Time Extensions Standard from the request page http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/116. Comments are due by 13 December, 2013.