PROPOSED 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 | Luis de Sousa (ISRIC)
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
Background of landscape, technology, and relationship to the Web, users, developers, implementers, and industry.
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.
- Develop, maintain and promote geospatial Web standards and geospatial profiles of more general Web standards as resources and interest permit.
- Maintain a list of OGC specifications and resources describing current practices in order to publicise these to the W3C audience.
Out of Scope
The Spatial Data on the Web Working Group will only produce deliverables where it is in the interests of both OGC and W3C to collaborate.
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.
Some extension modules are included in the
recommendation.
Alignments with some related ontologies and data
models are included in the recommendation.
The following existing specifications are potentially in scope for maintenance:
Other non-normative documents may be created such as:
Put here a timeline view of all deliverables.
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.
Consider adopting a healthy testing policy, such as: 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.
For specifications of technologies that directly impact user experience, such as content technologies, as well as protocols and APIs which impact content: Each specification 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:
In addition to the above catch-all reference to
horizontal review which includes accessibility review, please
check with chairs and staff contacts of the Accessible Platform
Architectures Working Group to determine if an
additional liaison statement with more specific information
about concrete review issues is needed in the list below.
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:
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 Ethics and Professional 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 pick one, or both, as appropriate: on the public mailing list public-sdw-wg@w3.org (archive) or 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.
Note:Display this table and update
it when appropriate. Requirements for charter extension
history are documented in the Charter
Guidebook (section 4).
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):
[description of change to charter,
with link to new deliverable item in charter] Note: use the class 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]
new for
all new deliverables, for ease of recognition.
Change log