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What are OGC-compliant WMS/WCS services?

The fast-changing realm of geospatial technologies relies heavily on interoperability and standardization. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)-compliant WMS/WCS services are responsible for providing interoperable frameworks for sharing, visualizing, and analyzing spatial information across technology platforms. The blog post will be focused on the technical specifications surrounding these services, their features, and why they remain relevant in contemporary GIS systems today.


OGC-compliant WMS/WCS services
OGC-compliant WMS/WCS services

What are OGC-Compliant Services?


The Open Geospatial Consortium is an international organization responsible for developing open standards for geospatial content and services. These standards help geospatial data and services work together across technology platforms without proprietary lock-in from vendor-specific technology. Two of the most commonly implemented OGC standards include:


  • WMS (Web Map Service)

  • WCS (Web Coverage Service)


These services offer interoperable interfaces for accessing geospatial data over the web, providing a level of importance (if not necessity) for GIS professionals and developers.


What is WMS (Web Map Service)


WMS is a standard collection developed by OGC for providing georeferenced map images (or maps) via the internet. It has a few important technical features:


  1. Request Types:

    • GetCapabilities: Returns metadata about the available layers, projections, and formats.

    • GetMap: Retrieves a map image for a specified area, projection, and styling.

    • GetFeatureInfo (optional): Provides detailed information about map features at specific locations.

  2. Output Formats: Commonly supports PNG, JPEG, GIF, SVG, and GeoTIFF.

  3. CRS Support: Compliant WMS servers allow clients to request maps in multiple coordinate reference systems (CRS), ensuring spatial consistency across applications.

  4. Layered Architecture: WMS layers can be overlaid, enabling complex thematic map compositions.


Use Case Example: A city planning application that overlays traffic density maps, zoning boundaries, and environmental layers in a web browser can leverage a WMS server to retrieve all layers in real-time.


Understanding WCS (Web Coverage Service)


Unlike WMS, which delivers images, WCS is designed to serve raw raster data (coverages) that can be analyzed quantitatively. This makes WCS ideal for scientific and analytical applications.


Technical Features of WCS:


  1. Core Requests:

    • GetCapabilities: Returns coverage metadata, including spatial extent, resolution, and formats.

    • DescribeCoverage: Provides detailed information about coverage properties and bands.

    • GetCoverage: Allows clients to retrieve raw geospatial data, supporting formats like GeoTIFF, NetCDF, and HDF5.

  2. Subsetting and Scaling: Users can request only a portion of a coverage or resample it at a different resolution, optimizing data transfer.

  3. CRS and Axis Handling: WCS fully supports multiple coordinate systems and allows multidimensional data handling (e.g., time-series satellite imagery).


Use Case Example: Climate scientists analyzing high-resolution temperature grids over decades can use WCS to fetch subsets of raster data for modeling and trend analysis.


Why Opt for OGC Standards for WMS/WCS?


  1. Interoperability: OGC-compliant services will work seamlessly across GIS systems like QGIS, ArcGIS and GeoServer.

  2. Scalability: Can handle concurrent user demand, with multiple users accessing the service at the same time without exceeding a service limit.

  3. Standardization: OGC compliance ensures that your services will be compatible as the GIS ecosystem grows and changes over time.

  4. Flexibility in Accessing Data: If you prefer to see the data visualized (WMS) or download the raw unprocessed data (WCS), either way, OGC strategies will cover both ends.


Technical Considerations for Implementation


Once you have decided to implement OGC-compliant services, GIS engineers should consider:


  • Server Software: GeoServer, MapServer, and ArcGIS Server that support the service type of WMS/WCS.

  • Supported Data Formats: Ensure the raster/vector data you have or will request is appropriately refactored to a format that will work within an OGC request (GeoTIFF, NetCDF, shapefiles).

  • Private data Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS): Ensure the data provider’s CRS is compatible with the key state to avoid any data visualization or use distance.

  • Security considerations: Security needs coupled with enterprise deployment would require HTTPS and token-based access.

  • Performance considerations: Reduce latency for the larger datasets by implementing multiple tools, such as caching layers to support the display of data when a streaming response Report is on file, using tiled retrieved data as a strategy, and implementing compression schemes.


Emerging Trends in OGC-Compliant Services


  • Cloud-based Mechanism: Cloud-based WMS/WCS services could be deployed in cloud applications (e.g., AWS or Azure) and support vast geospatial datasets.

  • 3D and Other Multidimensional Data: Future OGC standards are looking to expand coverage to 3D terrains, LiDAR, and time series data.

  • Interoperable APIs: Integration with RESTful and OGC APIs is helping make these services more developer-friendly.


OGC-compliant WMS/WCS services are the foundation stones of modern GIS ecosystems. By adhering to open standards, organizations can ensure their geospatial data is interoperable, scalable, and ready for advanced analysis. So, whether you are using the WMS service to visualize maps or the WCS service to analyze pixel data, the future use of these standards has the ability to enhance our use of spatial data in an interconnected world.


For more information or any questions regarding WMS and WCS, please don't hesitate to contact us at


USA (HQ): (720) 702–4849


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