DRAFT Spatial Data on the Web Working Group Charter
The mission of the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group is to:
- develop and maintain vocabularies and best practices that encourage better sharing of spatial data on the Web;
- identify areas where standards should be developed jointly by both W3C and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.
| Charter Status | See the group status page and detailed change history. |
|---|---|
| Start date | [dd monthname yyyy] (date of the "Call for Participation", when the charter is approved) |
| End date | [dd monthname yyyy] (Start date + 2 years) |
| Chairs | Luís de Sousa (University of Lisbon)
Rob Atkinson (OGC) |
| Team Contacts | Bert Bos (0.1 FTE) |
| Meeting Schedule | Teleconferences: weekly Face-to-face: The WG will meet in conjunction with the relevant OGC Working Group(s) during OGC's Member Meetings (up to 3 per year). Optionally during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week. additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 3 per year |
Motivation and Background
Increasing numbers of Web applications provide a means of accessing data. From simple visualisations to sophisticated interactive tools, there is a growing reliance on data. The open data movement has led to many national, regional and local governments to publish their data on the Web. Scientific and cultural heritage data is likewise increasingly published this way for reuse by others. Crowd-sourced and social media data are too abundant on the Web. Sensors, connected devices and services from domains such as energy, transport, manufacturing and healthcare are becoming commonly integrated using the Web as a common data sharing platform.
The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group (SDWWG) is concerned with spatial data: data that describes anything with spatial extent (i.e. size, shape or position). Spatial data is also known as location information. The SDWWG acknowledges lingering challenges with the provision of spatial data identified in the Data on the Web Best Practices (DWBP) document. The SDWWG thus commits to realise the full potential of the Web as a data sharing platform, developing, promoting and maintaining resources enabling the consistent and inter-linked provision of spatial data.
Spatial data are in fact abundant on the Web; the maps and street level images offered by search engines, vast collections of Earth Observation products provided by government agencies, the results of Research projects on a myriad of domains, spatial features published by commercial companies seeking to expand user and client engagement. These are but a few examples of a growing universe of spatial data available on the Web. However, these are often difficult to find and problematic to access for non-specialist users. The key problems are discoverability, accessibility, and interoperability. The overarching goal of the SDWWG is to enable spatial data to be integrated within the wider Web of data; developing and maintaining standard patterns and specifications addressing these problems.
Scope
The Spatial Data on the Web WG will:
- Maintain and update the SSN Ontology, including the SOSA vocabulary.
- Support the development of resources required to support the adoption of the SSN ontology.
- Work with OGC Standard Working Groups to jointly develop, maintain and promote geospatial Web standards and geospatial profiles of more general Web standards.
- Co-publish the next version of GeoSPARQL as a joint W3C/OGC standard
- Co-publish the OGC's CRS Ontology as a joint W3C/OGC standard
- Maintain a list of OGC specifications and resources describing current practices in order to publicise these to the W3C audience.
Out of Scope
- Specifications that are not directly supported by OGC Standard Working Groups.
- Best Practices that are not directly supported by OGC Domain Working Groups.
Deliverables
Updated document status is available on the group publication status page.
Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable
at the time of the charter approval. Expected
completion indicates when the deliverable is projected
to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable
state.
The Working Group will deliver the following W3C
normative specifications:
The Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology is an
RDFS/OWL ontology for describing observations made
by sensors implementing specified procedures, the
studied features of interest and the observed
properties, along with samples used in the
observations and the sampling activities that
created them, as well as actuations which follow a
similar semantics and data structure.
The SOSA vocabulary (Sensors, Observations,
Samples and Actuations) contains the core terms and
definitions from SSN, packaged for use in general
applications.
Additional parts of this ontology will be published as separate recommendations.
At time of charter these are expected to include:
Alignments with some related ontologies and data
models are included in the recommendation.
GeoDCAT will be a spatio-temporal profile of the W3C DCAT Recommendation [DCAT] , and provide guidance about its use and further specialization.
Additional profiles further specialising GeoDCAT may be published as separate recommendations.
GeoSPARQL contains a small spatial domain OWL ontology that allow literal representations of
geometries to be associated with spatial features and for features to be associated with other
features using spatial relations. GeoSPARQL also contains SPARQL extension function definitions that can be used to calculate
relations between spatial objects. Several other supporting assets are also contained within GeoSPARQL such as vocabularies of
Simple Feature types and data validators. An ontology for coordinate reference systems (CRS) The following existing specifications are in scope for potential maintenance:
Other non-normative documents may be created such as:
Normative Specifications
Other Deliverables
Timeline
Success Criteria
In order to advance to Proposed Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent interoperable implementations of every feature defined in the specification, where interoperability can be verified by passing open test suites, and two or more implementations interoperating with each other.
There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.
To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications in Candidate Recommendation or to features that have deployed implementations should have tests. Testing efforts should be conducted via the Web Platform Tests project.
Each specification should contain sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users.
Where appropriate, specifications should contain a section on accessibility that describes the benefits and impacts, including ways specification features can be used to address them, and recommendations for maximising accessibility in implementations.
This Working Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles.
Coordination
For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least 3 months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.
Additional technical coordination with the following Groups
will be made, per the W3C
Process Document:
Most working groups operating at OGC have a scope that
may intersect with topics of interest discussed in the
Spatial Data on the Web Working Group. The OGC Architecture
Board (OAB), comparable to the W3C Technical Advisory Group
(TAG) will provide high level guidance to the Spatial Data
on the Web Working Group. The Working Group expects to
liaise with OGC groups as needed, and more specifically
with:
None.
W3C Groups
OGC Groups
External Organizations
Participation
To be successful, this Working) Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a working day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.
The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.
The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration upon their agreement to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.
Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.
Communication
Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.
Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Spatial Data on the Web Working Group home page.
Most Spatial Data on the Web Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.
This group primarily conducts its technical work on the public mailing list public-sdw-wg@w3.org (archive) and on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.
The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.
Decision Policy
This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.
However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.
To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from one week to 10 working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.
All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.
This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.
Patent Policy
This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 September 2020). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.
Licensing
This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables, with copyright held by OGC and W3C. Published documents will be clearly marked as joint deliverables.
About this Charter
This charter has been created according to section
3.4 of the Process
Document. In the event of a conflict between this
document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C
Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.
The following table lists details of all changes from the
initial charter, per the W3C Process Document
(section 4.3, Advisory Committee
Review of a Charter):
Narrowed the scope to work related to ontologies. Dropped Time Ontology,, Best Practices, WebVMT and Responsible Use of Spatial Data. Added GeoDCAT, OGC GeoSPARQL and Coordinate Reference System Ontology
Changes to this document are documented in this section. Charter History
Charter Period
Start Date
End Date
Changes
Initial charter
19 October 2021
04 October 2023
Extension
04 October 2023
04 April 2024
Rechartered
[dd monthname yyyy]
[dd monthname yyyy]
Change log