Overview#
Geospatial data is easiest to share when every partner does not need a custom connector. A council GIS team may already expose planned works, flood polygons, service boundaries, or facility footprints through an OGC-compliant feature service. A command or analytical platform should be able to bring those layers in, govern them, and use them without rewriting the data model every time.
The OGC API Features Integration module provides that intake and governance layer. It lets organisations synchronise external feature collections, catalogue them internally, apply organisation and secrecy controls, and make those collections available to downstream operational and analytical workflows using an open geospatial standard instead of a one-off feed.
Last Reviewed: 2026-03-18 Last Updated: 2026-03-18
Key Features#
- Remote Collection Sync: Bring feature collections in from external OGC-compliant services instead of rebuilding them locally by hand.
- Collection Catalog: Maintain a governed list of synced collections with titles, descriptions, coordinate-reference context, and item counts.
- Organisation Scoping: Keep collections tied to the correct organisation so shared infrastructure does not turn into shared data by accident.
- Sensitivity-Aware Access: Apply data-handling and visibility rules before a collection is exposed downstream.
- Operational Reuse: Make synced collections available to maps, operational views, and analytics without one-off import projects.
- Collection Statistics: Give administrators a quick view of how many collections and features are available to the organisation.
Use Cases#
- Municipal GIS Layer Reuse: A local authority syncs service boundaries, flood-risk zones, or planned works from its GIS estate into operational workflows.
- Partner Hazard Overlays: A response team consumes authoritative hazard polygons from a partner agency instead of re-digitising them.
- Facility and Site Mapping: Critical infrastructure footprints and access perimeters are pulled in as standard feature collections.
- Exercise and Planning Layers: Scenario boundaries and exercise overlays are loaded from an external geospatial planning system.
- Cross-Team Situational Awareness: Multiple operational teams work from the same authoritative feature layer rather than emailing exports around.
Integration#
- Operational Mapping and Common Picture Services: Synced collections can be rendered directly in shared map and command surfaces.
- Analytics and Reporting: Feature collections can support proximity analysis, exposure reporting, and operational summaries.
- Form and Case Workflows: Submission and incident workflows can reference authoritative geographic layers during review.
- Open Geospatial Intelligence Services: The collection catalog can sit alongside other standards-based geospatial sources in the platform.
Open Standards#
- OGC API - Features: the module is built around the modern OGC standard for web-based feature collection exchange.
- GeoJSON: feature payloads can be exchanged using the standard JSON representation for geospatial data.
- CRS84 / EPSG:4326: geographic layers can align with the common latitude-longitude reference model used across web mapping.
- RFC 8288 Web Linking: collection and item navigation can align with standard web-link discovery patterns used by OGC APIs.
- RFC 8259 JSON: catalog and sync payloads can be exchanged in a standard structured format.
- ISO 8601: sync and catalog timestamps use a standard date-time representation.