OGC membership approves new Community Standard: Indoor Mapping Data Format

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) membership has added Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) 1.0.0 to the OGC Standards Baseline as a Community Standard.

Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) makes it possible for anyone to create indoor map apps and services using the same highly accurate and detailed data on any app, website, or operating system.

Examples include government agencies using an electronic standard of indoor maps data for efficient response to events; hospitals providing mapping guidance to patients, doctors, and visitors; and airports creating a single map that can be easily styled by partners without altering the accuracy of the underlying data.

Scott Simmons, Chief Standards Officer at the Open Geospatial Consortium said, “OGC is excited to see the explosive growth in the use of IMDF as a simple means to describe indoor spatial content. With IMDF now part of the OGC Standards Baseline, we look forward to deeper integration with other geospatial Standards to address location needs everywhere.”

IMDF was proposed as a Community Standard by OGC Members Apple, Autodesk, Esri, Google, New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DOITT), Ordnance Survey Limited, and Safe Software.

Now an OGC Community Standard, Indoor Mapping Data Format provides a mobile-friendly, compact, human-readable, temporally aware, highly extensible data model for any indoor space, providing a basis for orientation, navigation, and discovery.

Apple developed IMDF to deliver indoor maps for venues all around the world, making it possible for users of the Apple Maps app to find their way indoors and discover attractions, services, shopping, and dining.

An OGC Community Standard is an official standard of OGC that was already available as a widely used, mature specification, but was developed outside of OGC’s standards development and approval process. The originator of the standard brings to OGC a “snapshot” of their work that is then endorsed by OGC membership so that it can become part of the OGC Standards Baseline.

As with any OGC standard, the Indoor Mapping Data Format (IMDF) OGC Community Standard is free to download and implement.