SOSI is a geospatial vector data format predominantly used for exchange of geographical information in Norway. [1]
SOSI is short for Samordnet Opplegg for Stedfestet Informasjon (literally "Coordinated Approach for Spatial Information", but more commonly expanded in English to Systematic Organization of Spatial Information).
The standard includes standardized definitions for geometry and topology, data quality, coordinate systems, attributes and metadata. [1]
The open standard was developed by the Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority. It was first published in 1987 (version 1.0). It is continuously being revised and further developed. The long term development points towards international standards (ISO 19100). This work is being done by ISO/TC211, currently chaired by Olaf Østensen with the Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority.
The Geography Markup Language (GML) is the XML grammar defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to express geographical features. GML serves as a modeling language for geographic systems as well as an open interchange format for geographic transactions on the Internet. Key to GML's utility is its ability to integrate all forms of geographic information, including not only conventional "vector" or discrete objects, but coverages and sensor data.
A coverage is the digital representation of some spatio-temporal phenomenon. ISO 19123 provides the definition:
In computing, the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service (WFS) Interface Standard provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls. One can think of geographical features as the "source code" behind a map, whereas the WMS interface or online tiled mapping portals like Google Maps return only an image, which end-users cannot edit or spatially analyze. The XML-based GML furnishes the default payload-encoding for transporting geographic features, but other formats like shapefiles can also serve for transport. In early 2006 the OGC members approved the OpenGIS GML Simple Features Profile. This profile is designed both to increase interoperability between WFS servers and to improve the ease of implementation of the WFS standard.
A GIS file format is a standard of encoding geographical information into a computer file. They are created mainly by government mapping agencies or by GIS software developers.
In computing, GeoServer is an open-source server written in Java that allows users to share, process and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. GeoServer has evolved to become an easy method of connecting existing information to virtual globes such as Google Earth and NASA World Wind as well as to web-based maps such as OpenLayers, Leaflet, Google Maps and Bing Maps. GeoServer functions as the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature Service standard, and also implements the Web Map Service, Web Coverage Service and Web Processing Service specifications.
Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML notation for expressing geographic annotation and visualization within two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML was developed for use with Google Earth, which was originally named Keyhole Earth Viewer. It was created by Keyhole, Inc, which was acquired by Google in 2004. KML became an international standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium in 2008. Google Earth was the first program able to view and graphically edit KML files, but other projects such as Marble have added KML support.
ISO/TC 211 is a standard technical committee formed within ISO, tasked with covering the areas of digital geographic information and geomatics. It is responsible for preparation of a series of International Standards and Technical Specifications numbered in the number range starting at ISO-19101. The Chair of the committee was 1994-2016: Olaf Østensen; during 2017-2018: Christina Wasström; and from 2019 Agneta Gren Engberg.
Simple Features is a set of standards that specify a common storage and access model of geographic feature made of mostly two-dimensional geometries used by geographic information systems. It is formalized by both the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Mapbender is a graduated project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. It was awarded OGC web site of the month in 2008. It is used by PortalU and several federal states to implement the INSPIRE regulation. Many municipalities use Mapbender as City Map Services and it is used as the mapping framework for online cycle route planners.
GeoRSS is a specification for encoding location as part of a Web feed. (Web feeds are used to describe feeds of content, such as news articles, Audio blogs, video blogs and text blog entries. These web feeds are rendered by programs such as aggregators and web browsers.) The name "GeoRSS" is derived from RSS, the most known Web feed and syndication format.
Geospatial metadata is a type of metadata applicable to geographic data and information. Such objects may be stored in a geographic information system (GIS) or may simply be documents, data-sets, images or other objects, services, or related items that exist in some other native environment but whose features may be appropriate to describe in a (geographic) metadata catalog.
A spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is a data infrastructure implementing a framework of geographic data, metadata, users and tools that are interactively connected in order to use spatial data in an efficient and flexible way. Another definition is "the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data".
Distributed GIS refers to GI Systems that do not have all of the system components in the same physical location. This could be the processing, the database, the rendering or the user interface. It represents a special case of distributed computing, with examples of distributed systems including web-based GIS and Mobile GIS. Distribution of resources provides corporate and enterprise-based models for GIS. Distributed GIS permits a shared services model, including data fusion based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web services. Distributed GIS technology enables modern online mapping systems, Location-based services (LBS), web-based GIS and numerous map-enabled applications. Other applications include transportation, logistics, utilities, farm / agricultural information systems, real-time environmental information systems and the analysis of the movement of people. In terms of data, the concept has been extended to include volunteered geographical information. Distributed processing allows improvements to the performance of spatial analysis through the use of techniques such as parallel processing.
The Open Geospatial Consortium Web Coverage Service Interface Standard (WCS) defines Web-based retrieval of coverages – that is, digital geospatial information representing space/time-varying phenomena.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of GIS vector file format. Please see the individual products' articles for further information. Unless otherwise specified in footnotes, comparisons are based on the stable versions without any add-ons, extensions or external programs.
Olaf Magnus Østensen is a Norwegian civil servant. He works in the Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority, where he is Deputy Director for NGIS.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 500 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations worldwide collaborate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards for geospatial content and services, sensor web and Internet of Things, GIS data processing and data sharing.
WaterML is a technical standard and information model used to represent hydrological time series structures. The current version is WaterML 2.0, released an open standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC).
GeoSPARQL is a standard for representation and querying of geospatial linked data for the Semantic Web from the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). The definition of a small ontology based on well-understood OGC standards is intended to provide a standardized exchange basis for geospatial RDF data which can support both qualitative and quantitative spatial reasoning and querying with the SPARQL database query language.