This GitHub repository contains OGC's GeoSPARQL Standard.

This repository is managed by the GeoSPARQL Standards Working Group, the Charter for which can be viewed here:

• GeoSPARQL SWG Charter (online)

To see in-progress HTML & PDF versions of the various elements of GeoSPARQL 1.1 - specification, ontology, constituent vocabularies etc. - as well as the elements of the 1.0 version of the standard, please see:

• GeoSPARQL auto-built documentation

If you want to cite the living document of the in-progress standard we encourage you to use the following BibTeX statement:

@techreport{nicholas_j_car_ogc_2023,
	type = {{OGC} {Implementation} {Standard}},
	title = {{OGC} {GeoSPARQL} - {A} {Geographic} {Query} {Language} for {RDF} {Data}},
	url = {http://www.opengis.net/doc/IS/geosparql/1.1},
	number = {OGC 22-047},
	institution = {Open Geospatial Consortium},
	author = {{Nicholas J. Car} and {Timo Homburg} and {Matthew Perry} and {John Herring} and {Frans Knibbe} and {Simon J.D. Cox} and {Joseph Abhayaratna} and {Mathias Bonduel}},
	collaborator = {Paul J. Cripps and {Krzysztof Janowicz}},
	year = {2023},
  version = {1.1},
}

GeoSPARQL 1.0 was published in 2012. Since then the standard has seen considerable uptake. With that came requests for extension and improvement. This has led to the revival of the OGC GeoSPARQL Standards Working Group (SWG). The overall mission of the GeoSPARQL SWG is to ensure that the features of GeoSPARQL remain up-to-date with expectations from the Semantic Web community. For more details, see the SWG's charter (also linked to above) and the recently published OGC whitepaper Benefits of Representing Spatial Data Using Semantic and Graph Technologies.

The primary set of tasks for the SWG is the set of change requests for GeoSPARQL in the OGC Issue Tracker. All issues reported in the OGC issue tracker should have duplicates in this repository and should be labelled 'change request'. Not all change requests will be acted upon immediately. At least two updated versions of GeoSPARQL are expected to be released. A first set of change requests will be handled for GeoSPARQL 1.1. This set consists of changes that should only have a minor impact on existing implementations of the standard. More comprehensive changes will be made in later stages, resulting in additional releases. See the milestones for an overview of issues by iteration.

An index of the working artefacts can be found here. These are built automatically as updates occur.

Note: These are only working documents. Approved documents are published on the OGC Website.

Extended GeoSPARQL work can also be found in the following OGC code repositories:

• OGC GeoSPARQL Extended Shapes

It is the SWG's intention to operate as openly and transparently as possible. Different communities or knowledge domains use spatial data on the web and/or in graphs, in one way or another. They all stand to benefit from improvement of the GeoSPARQL standard, so participation in development is highly recommended.

Next to making change requests in the OGC Issue Tracker, which is possible for everyone at any time, anyone can participate in this standard's development by commenting on Issues in this repository, or adding a new Issue. The SWG particularly want to inivite implementers of the GeoSPARQL standard to get actively involved in working towards improved versions of the standard.

Note: GeoSPARQL 1.1's work is effectively complete, as of July 2022, however a next version - 1.2 or 2.0 etc. will likely be started soon. Check this repository and its Issue Tracker for updates.

To contact the SWG directly, you may email the closed SWG mailing list ([email protected]) or email SWG chairs directly:

• Joseph Abhayaratna - [email protected]
• Linda van den Brink - [email protected]
• Dimitris Kotzinos - [email protected]