New DWG will aim to improve interoperability of geospatial data in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning applications

4 September 2018: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) seeks public comment on the draft Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) Domain Working Group (DWG) Charter.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) technologies have started to be coupled with geoinformatics and are bringing geospatial intelligence to various domains, including autonomous transportation, predictable healthcare, sustainable urban planning/design/development, among others.

For example, AI-assisted volunteered geographic information (such as OpenStreetMap data) accelerates the development of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) from satellite imagery. Also, deep learning techniques provide micro-level prediction of human mobility and environmental exposure across different geographic areas in epidemiology. Further, autonomous vehicles gather, manage, and analyze massive amounts of geospatial data from a combination of GPS, cameras, and other traffic sensors and navigate with high-level human-like perception by using Deep Learning. Clearly, many fields can benefit from combining Artificial Intelligence with geospatial data.

The GeoAI DWG has been chartered to identify use cases and applications related to AI in geospatial domains such as healthcare, smart home, and autonomous cars. The GeoAI DWG will provide an open forum for broad discussion and presentation of use cases with the purpose of bringing geoscientists, computer scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and decision makers from academia, industry, and government together to develop, share, and research the latest trends, successes, challenges, and opportunities in the field of AI with geospatial data. The GeoAI DWG will aim to investigate the feasibility and interoperability of OGC standards to use and re-use geospatial data in AI applications, as well as describe gaps and issues that could lead to new geospatial standardization within the GeoAI domain community.

The draft Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI) Domain Working Group charter is available for review and comment on the  OGC Portal. Comments are due by 25 September 2018 and should be submitted via the method outlined on the  GeoAI DWG Draft Charter request page.

There will be a GeoAI ad-hoc at the September 2018 OGC Technical Committee meeting in Stuttgart, Germany. Scheduled from 14:45-16:30 on Wednesday 12th Sept, the session will discuss use cases and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques in geospatial domains as well as the contribution of OGC standards. It, like many other sessions, is open to OGC Members and non-members alike. Learn more at  ogcmeet.org.

Further,  OGC Testbed-14 contains a Machine Learning, Deep Learning & Artificial Intelligence task to evaluate how to best support Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and publish inputs to and outputs from Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence using OGC Web Services. OGC Web Services can be used potentially as a pivotal role to support Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence systems. 

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 525 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that ‘geo-enable’ the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful within any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at  www.opengeospatial.org.