Why Standards Matter – The objectives and roadmap of the International Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

Philosophy of Openness and Its Relevance in Moving Toward Sustainable Development

“…Using OGC Open standards not only makes geospatial data and software FAIR, but also fosters collaboration, cooperation, inclusiveness, transparency, access, and democratization of data and software for developers and users that are distributed across socio-political/ institutional borders and that are located in diverse sociocultural/economic/technological contexts. The features fostered by following the principles of Openness enhance developers' creativity, productivity, and impact in providing access to geospatial data, information, knowledge, and technologies as well as improving decisionmaking processes [20].…”

“…More resources for understanding the OGC, their work and its importance are provided by Reichardt and Robida [20] who present an overview and discussion of what are the OGC standards, their importance, and their role in bring the power of geospatial data and technologies to decision makers around the world. Coetzee et al [4] explain the use of Open standards in the development of geospatial Open Source Software and the synergies that occur when it is use in conjunction with Open Hardware, Open Data, Open Science, and Open Education.…”

“…By the way Open Source Software and Open Data are created, developed, distributed, and used, they are FAIR. This software and data are not exclusionary, have less barriers to be adapted to specific needs and contexts, encourage communication and cooperation strengthening social networks, foster learning and development of local capacities, and by being interoperable and reusable reduce waste of time and efforts while increasing creativity and productivity [20], [23].…”