DGIWG Military GIS Profile Integration

Overview#

Connect Argus to any DGIWG-profile military mapping node and pull classified terrain, infrastructure, and operational-feature layers straight into your shared operational picture, with clearance enforced on every record returned.

Defence, border-security, and allied-force organisations rarely own all the geospatial data they depend on. The authoritative layers live inside NATO geographic databases, national defence mapping agencies, and partner force endpoints, each running its own GIS stack. Reconciling those sources by hand is slow, error-prone, and a security liability, because every manual extract risks exposing a layer to an analyst who is not cleared to see it. DGIWG Military GIS Profile Integration removes that friction by speaking the common defence geospatial profiles directly.

Because the client speaks the open OGC service profiles mandated by the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group, there is no bespoke driver to write for each nation's GIS. Register an endpoint once, ingest the layers you need, and Argus persists them per organisation, marks each feature with a secrecy level, and forwards georeferenced infrastructure features into the common operational picture. Analysts then see only the layers their clearance permits, with no manual data-scrubbing step in between.

Key Features#

Open OGC Profile Client: A single client speaks OGC WFS 2.0.0 (GetCapabilities, GetFeature, DescribeFeatureType) and OGC WMS 1.3.0 (GetMap) against any DGIWG service-profile endpoint, so each nation's mapping node connects without a custom driver.
EPSG:4326 By Default: Every feature request defaults to the EPSG:4326 (WGS 84) coordinate reference system in line with the DGIWG profile mandate, keeping coordinates consistent across coalition sources and downstream map layers.
Layer Registration and Discovery: Register an external service endpoint and Argus reads its capabilities document to resolve human-readable layer titles, then stores the configuration per organisation for repeatable ingestion.
GeoJSON Feature Ingestion: Features are pulled as IETF RFC 7946 GeoJSON, optionally constrained to a bounding box, and persisted to a per-organisation feature store ready for analysis and visualisation.
Clearance-Gated Access: Each ingested feature carries a secrecy level (UNCLASSIFIED, RESTRICTED, or SECRET), and results are filtered against the requesting analyst's clearance before they leave the platform, so over-classified layers never reach an uncleared viewer.
Common Operational Picture Bridge: Georeferenced features are forwarded as infrastructure-type operational entities into the shared operational picture, placing external terrain and infrastructure alongside the rest of your situational data on one map.
WMS Map Imagery: Rendered map tiles can be retrieved over OGC WMS 1.3.0 GetMap for backdrop imagery where serving raster cartography is preferable to streaming individual features.
End-to-End Audit Trail: Every registration and ingestion writes an EDF-compliant audit record capturing actor, action, source endpoint, and feature counts, giving compliance teams a complete provenance log for externally sourced geospatial data.

Use Cases#

Defence and Allied Operations#

Pull authoritative terrain, infrastructure, and operational-feature layers from NATO geographic databases and partner force endpoints into a single operational picture, so planners work from the same coalition-grade geospatial baseline rather than reconciling exports by hand.

National Defence Mapping Agencies#

Connect to a national defence mapping agency's DGIWG-profile service to ingest officially maintained map layers on a recurring basis, keeping internal situational displays aligned with the authoritative national source.

Border Security and Territorial Surveillance#

Border-security organisations register frontier and infrastructure layers from allied mapping nodes, then monitor them on the operational picture alongside live sensor and incident data for a continuous territorial view.

In multi-national operations where analysts hold differing clearances, clearance-gated filtering ensures each participant sees only the layers their level permits, allowing one shared platform to serve mixed-clearance teams without separate data scrubbing.

Audited Geospatial Provenance#

Programmes operating under European Defence Fund and equivalent mandates use the per-action audit trail to evidence exactly which external layers were ingested, by whom, from which endpoint, and when.

Integration#

The DGIWG capability is exposed to customer applications and partner systems through the same authenticated platform interfaces used across Argus.

GraphQL API: A dedicated query and mutation surface drives the full workflow. Customers register an external OGC layer, ingest features from a WFS endpoint with an optional bounding box, list registered layers, list ingested features by layer, and read aggregate statistics, all through the authenticated GraphQL endpoint shared with other platform modules. Field names follow the platform's standard camelCase convention.

OGC Service Connectors: The built-in OGC client connects outward to any DGIWG-profile endpoint over WFS 2.0.0 and WMS 1.3.0, with an optional bearer token for services that require authentication. Because both are open OGC profiles, onboarding a new nation's GIS node means supplying a URL, not building an adapter.

Normalised Geospatial Model: Ingested data is stored in a consistent per-organisation model, registered layers carry service URL, service type, layer name, title, coordinate reference system, and feature count, while features carry GeoJSON geometry, properties, secrecy level, and ingestion time. This stable shape is safe to consume from partner applications and downstream displays.

Common Operational Picture Bridge: Each georeferenced feature is published into the shared operational picture as an infrastructure-type entity with its coordinates, so external map data appears alongside the rest of your operational entities without bespoke wiring on the customer side.

Authentication and Authorisation: All platform API access uses OAuth 2.0 / JWT bearer tokens scoped to the tenant. Every query and mutation requires an authenticated, cleared user, and results are scoped to the caller's organisation and clearance level before being returned.

Open Standards#

DGIWG Service Profiles (WFS, WMS, WCS, GeoPackage), the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group profiles that define NATO and EU interoperable geospatial services. Argus implements the client side of these profiles so any conformant defence mapping node connects without custom integration. See https://www.dgiwg.org/dgiwg/.
OGC WFS 2.0.0 (ISO 19142:2010), the Web Feature Service standard. The client uses GetCapabilities, GetFeature, and DescribeFeatureType to discover and retrieve vector features from external services.
OGC WMS 1.3.0 (ISO 19128:2005), the Web Map Service standard. The client uses GetMap to retrieve rendered map imagery for backdrop cartography.
GeoJSON (IETF RFC 7946), the standard encoding for geographic features. Ingested features are exchanged and persisted as GeoJSON, keeping geometry and properties portable across systems.
EPSG:4326 (WGS 84), the geographic coordinate reference system applied by default per the DGIWG profile mandate, ensuring coordinate consistency across all coalition sources.
OAuth 2.0 / JWT (RFC 6749 / RFC 7519), the open token framework used for all platform API authentication and tenant-scoped authorisation.

Security and Compliance#

All DGIWG layers, features, audit records, and statistics are scoped to the originating organisation. No registered endpoint or ingested feature is reachable from outside the tenant that created it.

Clearance enforcement is applied on the way out, not just at storage time. Every feature is held with an explicit secrecy level (UNCLASSIFIED, RESTRICTED, or SECRET), and result sets are filtered against the requesting analyst's clearance before delivery, so an uncleared viewer can never receive an over-classified layer even if it exists in the store. When a feature's classification cannot be determined, it resolves to the most restrictive safe default rather than being exposed.

Every registration and ingestion writes an EDF-compliant audit record capturing actor, action, source endpoint, and feature counts, providing a complete and durable provenance trail for externally sourced geospatial data. This satisfies the requirement, common to European Defence Fund and equivalent programmes, that operations on sensitive data are logged with actor, action, and provenance.

Last Reviewed: 2026-05-26 / Last Updated: 2026-05-26

DGIWG Military GIS Profile Integration

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