As part of the Governance of the Forest Data Space (FDS), we have established a Data Interoperability Group (DIG)
For the FDS, we use open standards and formats where possible, only reverting to more proprietary solutions where necessary due to a lack of working options. In general, we will adopt standards applied by the European Green Deal Data Space.
Open Formats
Formats defined the encoding of data structures into a physical representation. In the FDS, we only use open formats that are suitable for geospatial data. These formats include:
- GeoTIFF and Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF for raster data sets
- CSV, GML, GeoPackage and GeoJSON for structured/vector data sets
To make data upload easier, we also support Shapefiles as a data source. However, there are many known issues with Shapefiles, such as the encoding being broken, or the usage of inconsistent Spatial Reference System definitions.
Open APIs
APIs are interfaces for programmatic access to data or analytic processes.
As described in the APIs specification, we use standardised APIs where feasible and generally build on OGC, INSPIRE and IDSA specifications:
- STAC for Bulk Data Access
- OGC API, Features and WFS for access to strutured/vector data sets
- OGC API, Processes for the Ranking Service as well as for the Trend Analysis and Alerts Service
- OpenAPI 3.0 – based interfaces for the ProMCDA service as well as for the FDS Coverage API
Logical Models
Logical models are needed to map the concepts and vocabularies of a conceptual model to a concrete encoding (format) such as GeoPackage or GeoJSON.
There are quite a few such specifications for harvesting operations and further processing of timber, but there are only few standards for forest inventory data and silvicultural processes. Of these standards, none has a very wide adoption. Some, such as the German National Forest Inventory, can be used as input data, but not directly to solve forest management tasks, and also have multiple technical issues.
For this reason, we are working with multiple groups, e.g. ForestGML, the initiative “Wald und Daten” and Runder Tisch Digitalisierung Forst und Holz at the FNR, to develop suitable standards for logical models (and vocabularies, see below).
For ancillary data, we rely on existing standards:
Surface Geology
INSPIRE
Soil
INSPIRE
Hydrogeography
INSPIRE
Elevation
INSPIRE
Sensor Data
INSPIRE EMF + OGC O&M
Semantics / Vocabularies
Concepts and Vocabularies, e.g. codelists or taxonomies, are essential to data interoperability, because they define the actual meaning of the objects we exchange. The situations for semantics is similar to the situation for logical models: there are not really suitable ones that see broad adoption. We will thus also work on defining core vocabularies together with the respective groups.
As for ancillary data, we rely on codelists and concepts published in the scope of existing standards:
Surface Geology
INSPIRE
Soil
INSPIRE
Hydrogeography
INSPIRE