OGC Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Pilot 2023 - Connecting Land and Sea for Global Awareness: Call for Participation (CFP)

Globally, we are currently facing many rapidly changing environments such as climate, computing, space commercialization, economics, to name a few. One of the significantly important aspects of these environments is our changing oceans and coasts, and correspondingly the diverse data associated with them, such as the sharing and exchange of data between land and sea systems, changing ports and shipping lanes, coastal changes due to storms, sea level rise, and many more. To better understand, adapt, manage, mitigate, and prepare for all these coastal and marine changes, OGC is calling for participation in the Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) Pilot Project that spans science, economics, logistics, and geospatial solutions while promoting the principles of Finding, Accessing, Interoperating, and Reusing (FAIR).
The Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), also supported by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are interested in advancing spatial data integration to create future Digital Twins of Singapore’s coastal and marine environments. One of the compelling challenges of this work is to overcome the disparity between marine and terrestrial data systems and formats to enable interoperable and integrable systems and services towards digital twin development that will enable the creation of what-if scenarios and scientific and societal questions. 30% of Singapore’s land mass is less than 5m above sea level, hence the need for accurate, variational data that can address long and near-term decision making, experimental evaluation using digital twins and across diverse situations. This work will focus on storm surge, coastal flooding, and land areas including port infrastructure anywhere in Singapore. See Section 2.1 Digital Twin of Land and Sea Interfaces - Singapore for further details on this challenge.
Satellite imagery illustrates the dramatic loss of sea ice over the last several decades as air and water temperatures in the Arctic have warmed – one of many documented changes being tracked and reported annually. The loss of sea ice in the Arctic has led to accelerated ocean warming, stronger winds and currents, and accelerated shoreline erosion in Arctic communities (Moon et al. 2019). Ecosystems are adapted to the climate in certain areas, and climate change will therefore influence ecosystems. As an example, marine mammals and other marine species (e.g., Arctic seabirds) rely on the year-round or seasonal presence of sea ice. Other species (e.g., humpback, fin, and gray whales) migrate to the Arctic from more temperate regions to feed during the summer months. These species follow the receding sea ice edge and take advantage of the region’s immense summer biological productivity. This challenge is focused on the Arctic and development of geospatial data integration concepts that form the future of an integrated “Digital Arctic”: an integrated ecosystem allowing access, sharing, and use of any geospatial information set relevant for decision making in the Arctic region. Efforts through this work will contribute to the fundamental understanding of efficient and powerful spatio-temporal data integration and processing platforms through such concepts as Digital Twins, land-sea data integration, and climate change scenarios, among others. Please see Section 2.2 Digital Arctic Connecting Land and Sea for more details on this challenge.
In addition, we are challenging our Participants to demonstrate new uses of navigation data to advance the “Blue Economy”: the sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health. What are the possibilities of fully exploiting land-marine geospatial information and how suitable is navigational data for use with other types of data? Shipping is rapidly adopting and advancing digital innovations, optimizing data solutions, and looking towards the next generation of navigation. What new uses and innovative capabilities could come from integration of all this navigation data and improved connectivity at sea? This challenge will concentrate on a Caribbean-based scenario but can certainly be coordinated with the other scenarios and challenges within this call. Refer to Section 2.3 Various Use Cases to Integrate Land & Sea in the Caribbean for more details.
Note: While this call for participation is separated into three distinct areas of interest we encourage cross-cutting solutions where applicable and desired. The deliverables from cross-cutting solutions would include a single Engineering Report (ER), video, and demo describing the work, not multiples of the deliverables for each study region.

Since the areas of land and water are traditionally separated organizationally, the integration of data for the respective areas or their interface poses a particular challenge. On the one hand, this is due to different areas of responsibility and the resulting different data content and formats. On the other hand, the requirements for the factual characteristics of data and the location concepts on which they are based differ. As an example, while land-based objects are usually modeled using a local spatial reference system to define their height above ground, sea-based objects use both mean sea level and maximum tide height to define dispersion areas. These differences can play an important role in the modeling of floodplains and associated urban and land development.
This initiative is based on the result of the OGC FMSDI Pilot Phase 3 and Phase 1 & 2 which started in September 2021 until January 2023. These pilots again built on the works of prior OGC Collaborative Solutions and Innovation (COSI) Program initiatives, such as the Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure Concept Development Study, the Maritime Limits and Boundaries Pilot, and the Arctic Spatial Data Pilot.

The goal of this Pilot is to advance the FMSDI concept to facilitate improved land-sea data systems, explore Digital Twin concepts related to coastal management, and imagine where interoperable land-sea, coastal, and navigational data can improve: climate change and impact understanding; disaster and storm mitigation and response; economic and land preservation; and might enhance the “Blue Economy”.
The overarching goal of the scenario development and exploration work is both to demonstrate interoperability with state-of-the-art concepts and technologies, and to develop design, setup, and maintenance guidelines for senior decision makers in particular. Demonstrations of information products will be made available persistently and individual components of the demonstration will be made accessible in the form of deployable software containers, as much as possible while respecting data and software licensing requirements.
It is widely recognized that standards play an essential role for data integration and processing. The Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles are key to integrate data from multiple sources and owners into analytical environments. This pilot shall explore how we can combine geospatial data at standardized interfaces with tabular data and live spatial data feeds. These data feeds, e.g. ocean monitoring buoys, weather sensors, and land systems represent key dimensions of integrated land-sea systems and related Digital Twins. How can we protect our coastal cities and lands, preserve our coastal food sources and port systems, and track changes over time from the Arctic, to Singapore, to the Caribbean? Vast amounts of data in the marine environment have been produced with navigation as the primary goal. Is that data fit for other purposes, such as search & rescue, environment, economics? What are the new purposes and use cases we can build with the data we have available?
OGC is exploring standards-based software architectures for marine environments as well as the land-marine interface as part of the FMSDI Pilot series. Previous initiatives of the FMSDI series conducted in 2021 and 2022 explored the capabilities of International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and OGC standards for marine data discovery, access, integration, and reuse. The corresponding use cases from the past Pilot series included marine protected areas and vessel routes in the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, and the North Sea.

Digital Twin Challenge: Integration of Land and Marine data for Coastal Protection Planning, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and Resilience.
Geospatial data and interface standards are a foundational element of data integration and analysis.
These standards act as a catalyst toward achieving a Digital Twin of the land-sea interface. Since the areas of land and water are traditionally separated organizationally, the primary objective is to demonstrate how geospatial standards can better support interoperability of land and marine geospatial data. The work shall develop a proof-of-concept design that can be extended to an operational implementation by any jurisdiction. The proof-of-concept shall be structured such that it can be extended in future to cover more diverse scenarios with minimal modification.
This will be achieved through the investigation, development, and implementation of standards that can enable solutions for geospatial information discovery, access, management, sharing, predictive analytics, and use required to support decision making by diverse stakeholders. The project focuses on the use case of coastal vulnerability to storm surges. Both storm surge data and consequences on the harbor and land side will be evaluated. The main focus is on the integrability of data concerning the land as well as the seaside. It will be considered to what extent these data fit together in terms of content, modeling approaches, encoding details, spatial and temporal resolution, and accuracy. The results will serve as the basis for a variety of activities and analyses that require integration of land and ocean geospatial information. The exact characteristics of the use case will be defined within the first month of this project.
This effort will specifically explore the development and use of modern geospatial standards frameworks, such as OGC API, and relevant IHO and ISO standards, to facilitate land and marine geospatial data integration. Work will evaluate if existing modern standards frameworks are sufficient to support Singapore’s requirements related to land-marine geospatial data integration and, if found to be sufficient, demonstrate implementation within the context of the project use case. If current standards approaches are determined to not be sufficient, the project will outline recommended standards-development activities.

Satellite imagery illustrates the dramatic loss of sea ice over the last several decades as air and water temperatures in the Arctic have warmed. The loss of sea ice in the Arctic has led to accelerated ocean warming, stronger winds and currents, and accelerated shoreline erosion in Arctic communities (Moon et al. 2019). Ecosystems are adapted to the climate in certain areas, and climate change will therefore influence ecosystems. As an example, marine mammals and other marine species (e.g., Arctic seabirds) rely on the year-round or seasonal presence of sea ice. Other species (e.g., humpback, fin, and gray whales) migrate to the Arctic from more temperate regions to feed during the summer months. These species follow the receding sea ice edge and take advantage of the region’s immense summer biological productivity.
As the impacts of climate change continue to increase, a multi-dimensional Digital Arctic to address challenges around the integration and use of land and marine geospatial information is critical. This project will explore how geospatial standards can be leveraged to help and eliminate/reduce such challenges and identify potential opportunities for coastal communities, ecosystems, and economic activities in the Arctic environment.
The primary objective is to demonstrate how geospatial standards can better support the interoperability of land and marine geospatial data for a Digital Arctic. The work shall develop a proof-of-concept design that can be extended to an operational implementation by any jurisdiction. The proof-of-concept shall be structured such that it can be extended in future to cover more diverse scenarios with minimal modification.
This will be achieved through the investigation, development, and implementation of standards that can enable solutions for geospatial information discovery, access, management, sharing, predictive analytics, and use required to support decision-making by diverse stakeholders. To limit the scope of this effort the project will focus on a coastal sensitivity to climate change use case in the Arctic; however, outcomes will inform approaches for a variety of activities requiring integration of land and marine geospatial information.
In particular, the development and use of modern geospatial standards, such as OGC API standards, will be explored to facilitate the integration of land and marine geospatial data within the Digital Arctic. Work will evaluate if existing modern standards frameworks are sufficient to support Canada’s requirements related to Digital Arctic geospatial data integration and, if found to be sufficient, demonstrate implementation within the context of the project use case. If current standards approaches are determined to not be sufficient, the project will outline recommended standards-development activities.