Standardisation of GeoSPARQL 1.1

Finished
GeoSPARQL Shirley Sidharta, CC BY SA 4.0

The GeoSPARQL 1.0 standard was published in 2012 as the first OGC standard for the representation of vector data in the Semantic Web. In the years that followed, many Linked Open Data databases (triple stores) implemented it. Due to intensive discussions in the “Spatial Data On The Web Working Group” and the “OGC GeoSemantics DWG”, an update of the GeoSPARQL 1.0 standard has been underway since 2020. Almost 10 years after its initial publication, it was initially intended to bring GeoSPARQL up to date technically and add further core components.

Motivation

The involvement of scientists in standardisation processes is crucial to ensure that technical standards and protocols are based on practical applications and sound scientific knowledge. The need to update the GeoSPARQL standard has become clear from various i3mainz projects in recent years. Timo Homburg has been involved in the update.

In 2023, the GeoSPARQL 1.1 standard was adopted by the OGC Technical Committee. In addition to other improvements, the update includes the following core components

  • Description of the complete standard in OWL using RDF profiles
  • Service description for GeoSPARQL 1.1 SPARQL endpoints and JSON-LD contexts
  • SHACL shapes for the validation of GeoSPARQL 1.1 graphs
  • Support for FeatureCollections and GeometryCollections in the Semantic Web

Meanwhile, a co-publication of the GeoSPARQL 1.1 standard as an ISO standard was prepared in 2023. For this purpose, the layout was adapted to ISO specifications and submitted to the ISO Working Group for evaluation, and work also began on the GeoSPARQL 1.2 standard, which will deal with the following topics:

  • Integration of semantically described coordinate reference systems
  • Integration of geometry roles and styles
  • Support for geocodes
  • Support for all functions of the Simple Feature Access Standard
  • Support for 3D geometries in GeoSPARQL