Today's demand for ad-hoc extraction and analytics goes well beyond the traditional approach of serving a bunch of files in some provider chosen format and granularity. Rather, flexibility in access, independent from low-level issues like formats, server-side data organisation (such as directories, tiling, etc.), and rich functionality for use without programming skills are among key requirements on future-oriented services that are both powerful and user-centric.

The OGC coverage concept, also adopted by ISO and INSPIRE, represents a unifying model for spatio-temporal regular and irregular grids, point clouds, and general meshes. Based on this data model, the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS), suite representing OGC’s “Big Data” standard, provides a streamlined service model with rich, versatile functionality.

Large and growing tool support, both open-source and proprietary, as well as the massive data offerings existing - such as the Petabyte services of the EarthServer initiative - prove feasibility and relevance of these standards. This wave of uptake is currently leading to a next level of harmonization and user-oriented service quality. However, there is still a general lack of knowledge and skills in modelling and using coverage services which makes some users and providers hesitant about choosing coverage-based software.

In this session, given by the editor of the coverage standards suite, we present the coverage data and service definitions and their use for building portals, with special emphasis on spatio-temporal datacubes. Ample room will be available for Q&A. Real-life examples will illustrate all details; online services will be used for demonstration, and participants with an Internet-connected device can rerun and modify examples.

Participants will learn about the status and direction of the coverage and datacube standards in OGC, ISO, and INSPIRE. They will understand how to model common raster data set as standards-conformant coverages, and how to serve and use these over Web services. Based on this, the audience will understand the relevance of standards for harmonized, flexible Spatial Data Infrastructures.