May 2026 Builder Days Code Sprint
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OGC Builder Days offer collaborative and inclusive code sprints that provide an environment for rapid and innovative development of new applications and candidate standards. The May 2026 OGC Code Sprint will bring together software developers, architects, and standards editors to work collaboratively on emerging standards.
The sprint focuses on three key topics:
- The GEOINT Imagery Media for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (GIMI) standard.
- The development of a JSON encoding for the Geoscience Markup Language (GeoSciML) standard.
- The 3D Tiles community standard and glTF - the primary tile format of 3D Tiles.
In addition to these key topics, participants will also work on selected OGC APIs and topics related to Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (IPT).
The goals of the event will be to:
- Develop prototype implementations
- Test the prototype implementations
- Identify opportunities for further innovation
- Provide feedback to the Editors, Working Groups, and OGC Testbed participants about what worked and what did not
The Code Sprint is sponsored by NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and is part of OGC Testbed-21 reflecting strong engagement from government, industry, and the broader geospatial community. If you'd like to learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact membership@ogc.org
The code sprint will take place from the 11th to the 13th of May 2026. A pre-event webinar will be held on April 22 from 14:00 to 15:00 UTC+1 to introduce the code sprint, outline planned activities, and help participants prepare. Those planning to participate are encouraged to attend in person.
Other than the pre-event webinar, the meeting will be hybrid and will take place at Geovation, London, United Kingdom and on the OGC events discord server. If you are attending in person, please check the travel info section.
Geovation: F4, Sutton Yard, 65 Goswell Rd., London EC1V 7EN, United Kingdom.
Here is a list of recommended hotels:
- Premier Inn London Farringdon (Smithfield) hotel: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZBmNgG9TRkJwjeoTA
- Hotel nhow London: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ifxPWtggXaUxuimWA
- Marrable's Hotel (formerly The Zetter Hotel): https://maps.app.goo.gl/sbw9qZAfsdu6vjW29
Join Discord from Windows, Mac, iOS or Android: https://discord.gg/3uyaZZuXr3
Discord app download: https://discord.com/download
Most text channels are also bridged on Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/%23ogc:matrix.org
At this sprint, all the online meetings will take place on Teams. See the details here. The discussions will still take place on the Discord text channels.
Getting There:
- Tube: About a 10-minute walk from Farringdon or Barbican stations (Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines).
- Train: Farringdon Station serves Thameslink & national rail services.
- Bus: Several routes stop within easy walking distance, including 4, 19, 38, 56, 153, 341, and night buses N19, N38, N41.
- Parking: Limited street parking and nearby public car parks are available; please note that parking is at your own cost.
Accessibility: Elevator access to the 4th floor is available. Upon arrival, please check in at the reception on the ground floor, and the reception staff will provide access to the elevator.
The code sprint will be held on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC+1). You can check here the time for your location.
The schedule for the pre-event webinar is below.
| Date | Time | Day/ Activity | Virtual Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-22 | Day #0 (pre-event): Welcome Webinar | 📣 teams | |
| 14:00 - 14:10 | Welcome remarks - Joana Simoes (OGC) | ||
| 14:10 - 14:20 | Overview and Sprint Goals for participating OGC working groups and OGC Testbed 21 - Gobe Hobona (OGC) | ||
| 14:20 - 14:35 | Overview and Sprint Goals for the GEOINT Imagery Media for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (GIMI) Standard activity - Joe Stufflebeam (Teknicare) | ||
| 14:35 - 14:45 | Overview and Sprint Goals for the candidate GeoSciML JSON encoding Standard activity - Mark Rattenbury (IUGS CGI) and Gobe Hobona (OGC) | ||
| 14:45 - 14:55 | Overview and Sprint Goals for the 3D Tiles community standard and glTF activity - Sean Lilley (Bentley Systems) and Tam Belayney (Esri) | ||
| 14:55 - 15:00 | Q&A |
The schedule for the main event is below. During the Practical Work sessions, participants work on self-directed tasks such as coding, review of source code, or writing of technical documentation. For the mentor streams, and other breakout activities, please check the detailed schedule here.
| Date | Time | Main Activity | Breakout Activity | Virtual Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-11 | Day #1: Kick-Off | |||
| 09:00 - 10:00 | Welcome & Opening Remarks | 📣 teams | ||
| 10:00 - 10:20 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 10:20 - 10:40 | Practical Work | Mentor Stream Onboarding – Joana Simoes (OGC) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 10:40 - 11:00 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Practical Work | 3D Tiles and glTF - Sean Lilley (Bentley Systems) | 📣 teams | |
| 11:30 - 12:00 | Practical Work | Tutorial Introducing GIMI – Joe Stufflebeam (Teknicare) & Devon Sookhoo (Teknicare) | 📣 teams | |
| 12:00 - 12:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 12:30 - 13:30 | 🍜 Lunch | |||
| 13:30 - 14:00 | Practical Work | Tutorial on Using the GIMI Conformance Testing Tool – Samantha Lavender (Pixalytics) & Chuck Heazel (Heazel Technologies) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 14:00 - 14:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 14:30 - 15:00 | Practical Work | Data Quality for Integrity, Provenance, Trust – Andreas Matheus (Secure Dimensions), Lucio Colaiacomo (4113 Engineering), & Joan Masó (UAB - CREAF) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 15:00 - 15:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 15:30 - 16:00 | Practical Work | Adding Location to GIMI and HEIF with GeoHEIF – Joan Masó (UAB - CREAF) & Núria Julià Selvas (UAB - CREAF) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 16:00 - 16:15 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 16:15 - 17:00 | Practical Work | (16:15 to 16:45) The Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) - Sina Taghavikish (OGC), Glenn Laughlin (Pelagis Data Solutions), Caroline Levey (OceanWise) & Stelios Contarinis (HARTIS Integrated Nautical Services) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 17:00 - 18:00 | Daily Brief Back | 📣 teams | ||
| 2026-05-12 | Day #2 | |||
| 09:00 - 09:30 | Practical Work | GeoSPARQL and the UK Information Exchange Standard (IES) - Paul Cripps (Dstl) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 09:30 - 10:00 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 10:00 - 10:30 | Stand-up | 📣 teams | ||
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Practical Work | GeoSPARQL and the Imagery Domain Ontology (IDO) - Devon Sookhoo (Teknicare) & Simon Cox | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 11:30 - 12:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 12:30 - 13:30 | Lunch 🍜 | |||
| 13:30 - 14:00 | Practical Work | Progress and Plans for the OGC API - EDR and Associated Standards – Chris Little (Met Office) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 14:00 - 14:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 14:30 - 15:00 | Practical Work | AI-DGGS presented by Sina Taghavikish (OGC) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 15:00 - 15:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 15:30 - 16:00 | Practical Work | The Role of Open Standards in Shaping Gaussian Splats, OpenUSD to Geo AI in Geospatial Workflows - Tamrat Belayneh (Esri) | 👾 Discord | |
| 16:00 - 17:00 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 17:00 - 18:00 | Daily Brief Back | 📣 teams | ||
| 2026-05-13 | Day #3: Final Day | |||
| 09:00 - 09:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 09:30 - 10:00 | Practical Work | Serving OGC API - Processes with pygeoapi and Prefect - Ricardo Garcia Silva (Geobeyond) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 10:00 - 10:30 | Stand-up | 📣 teams | ||
| 10:30 - 11:00 | Practical Work | A case study in vibe-coding OGC API - Connected Systems - Sam Bolling (Riverside Research) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 11:00 - 11:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 11:30 - 12:00 | Practical Work | A tutorial and walkthrough implementing Binary Encodings with OGC API - Connected Systems - Robin White (GeoRobotix) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 12:00 - 12:30 | Practical Work | WebVMT: GIMI Video Metadata on the Web - Rob Smith (Away Team) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 12:30 - 13:30 | Lunch | 🍜 | ||
| 13:30 - 14:00 | Practical Work | A tutorial and walkthrough implementing Pub/Sub MQTT with OGC API - Connected Systems - Ian Patterson (GeoRobotix) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 14:00 - 14:30 | Practical Work | 👾 Discord | ||
| 14:30 - 15:00 | Practical Work | (14:30 to 14:45) A tutorial on automated tipping and cuing between a satellite and drone using OGC API - Connected Systems - Drew Botts (GeoRobotix) | 👾 Discord/ 📣 teams | |
| 15:00 - 16:00 | Demos & Wrap-up | 📣 teams | ||
| 16:00 - 18:00 | Demos & Wrap-up | 📣 teams |
If you would like to add any items to the schedule, just edit the agenda above and add another row on the relevant section. Example:
| | 11:00 - 12:00 | pygeoapi meeting |
Meeting ID: 291 891 040 830 07
Passcode: eE7Zb7bh
Phone Number: +44 20 3855 5687 (London, UK)
Phone Conference ID: 164 172 217#
Registration is free for everyone. You may register here. At the time of the event, only registered participants will have access to the relevant Discord channels.
- GeoHEIF
- Geoscience Markup Language (GeoSciML)
- GeoSPARQL
- OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR)
- OGC API - Maps
- OGC API - Coverages
- OGC API - Connected Systems
- 3D Tiles
If you are coming to an OGC Builder Days Code Sprint for the first time, you may be a little lost and confused about what you should do when you get there. That is why we will have an onboarding day, to help you get started in the OGC Community. In the Discord server, you will find a section called "mentoring", which contains multiple channels. On day 1 of the code sprint, we will feature a stream of tutorials at TBA.
On the first day of the code sprint, there will be a mentor stream onboarding session on 11th of May, 10:20 - 10:40 UTC+1.
If you would like to present a hands-on, entry-level tutorial, just add an entry below, following the same format of the Sample Tutorial (you can see here examples from a previous sprint). Please choose a time slot on day 1 (the 11th), that does not conflict with any of the scheduled events.
Description: This tutorial will introduce the GEOINT Imagery Media for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (GIMI) family of standards, pronounced "gimmie." The GIMI family of standards integrates advanced media standards such as the ISO/IEC 14496-12 ISO Base Media File Format (ISOBMFF) and the ISO/IEC 23008-12 High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF). Some of the media that GIMI is designed to support are still images, motion imagery, tiled imagery, audio, timing information, and content identification (id) information.
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Joe Stufflebeam & Devon Sookhoo
Proposed schedule: 11th of May, 11:30 - 12:00 UTC+1
Description: This tutorial will provide training on the use of the GIMI Conformance Testing Tool, which is an executable test suite that integrates into the TEAM Engine harness. Participants will be shown how to build, install, and use the GIMI Conformance Testing Tool. Participants will also be shown how to interpret the conformance test results.
Technologies: Java, Maven, Docker
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Samantha Lavender & Chuck Heazel
Proposed schedule: 11th of May, 13:30 - 14:00 UTC+1
Description: There is a growing recognition that robust approaches for validating data integrity, provenance, and trust (IPT) are needed. This is more so for Earth Observation (EO) data because much imagery-supported decision making relies on analysing data from different sources. A prerequisite for achieving trust by assuring data integrity and provenance, is to ensure that data quality is documented, and communicated effectively. This lightning talk will present some of the work of the Data Quality for Integrity, Provenance, and Trust (DQ4IPT) thread of the OGC Testbed-21 initiative.
Technologies: STAC, OGC API - Processes, OGC API - Records, ISO 19115, NASA UMM, TrainingDML-AI, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), and Verifiable Credentials (VCs)
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Andreas Matheus, Lucio Colaiacomo, & Joan Maso
Proposed schedule: 11th of May, 14:30 - 15:00 UTC+1
Description: The High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) format, defined by Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), is a multipart data encoding that can support georeferenced imagery when used with the GeoHEIF extension that was proposed by the previous OGC Testbed-20 initiative. The GeoHEIF (Geographic High Efficiency Image Format) specification defines HEIF properties to include georeferencing information in one or more image items. These capabilities makes it possible to include georeferencing information in a GIMI (GEOINT Imagery Media for ISR) imagery file, as GIMI is a profile of the HEIF standard. This lightning talk will present an overview of how GeoHEIF enables GIMI and HEIF to support georeferencing.
Technologies: HEIF, GIMI
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Joan Masó & Núria Julià Selvas
Proposed schedule: 11th of May, 15:30 - 16:00 UTC+1
Description: The Federated Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (FMSDI) initiative is an OGC initiative with the objective to enhance Marine Spatial Data Infrastructure (MSDIs), to understand MSDI maturity better and demonstrate the power of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data in the context of the marine environment. The initiative engages with stakeholders from the marine dataspace to identify opportunities to assist, improve, and scale out core business processes complemented by the OGC suite of standards and best practices. This lightning talk will present an overview of the initiative and outline key findings from the most recent Phase of the initiative. The session will include a brainstorming activity to explore ideas for the the next phase of the FMSDI initiative (for instance, how to use OGC APIs to serve S-100 conformant data).
Technologies: DGGS, OGC APIs, S-100
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Sina Taghavikish, Glenn Laughlin, Caroline Levey & Stelios Contarinis
Proposed schedule: 11th of May, 16:30 - 17:00 UTC+1
Description: The Information Exchange Standard (IES) was developed by a group of government departments in the United Kingdom to improve data exchange across different organisations, sectors, and systems. Initially established within defence and national security, IES has evolved into a cross-sector resource supporting a wide range of industries, including buildings, transport and utilities. IES makes use of the OGC GeoSPARQL standard for the representation of locations. This presentation will introduce IES and describe the role of GeoSPARQL within IES.
Technologies: GeoSPARQL, Linked Data, RDF, ontology
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Paul Cripps
Proposed schedule: 12th of May, 09:00 - 09:30 UTC+1
Description: The Imagery Domain Ontology (IDO) is an ontology that is being developed to facilitate the description of imagery contained in GIMI files. GIMI files are envisaged to carry RDF-encoded metadata that conforms to the IDO. This presentation will introduce the IDO and describe how GeoSPARQL is used in the IDO to represent location.
Technologies: GeoSPARQL, Linked Data, RDF, ontology, GIMI, IDO
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Devon Sookhoo (Teknicare) and Simon Cox
Proposed schedule: 12th of May, 11:00 - 11:30 UTC+1
Description: The OGC API - Environmental Data Retrieval (EDR) standard provides a family of lightweight query interfaces to access spatiotemporal data resources by requesting data at a Position, within an Area, along a Trajectory or through a Corridor. A spatio-temporal data resource is a collection of spatio-temporal data that can be sampled using the EDR query pattern geometries. This lightning talk will present the latest progress and plans for the EDR API. The lightning talk will also cover plans for associated standards such as the CoverageJSON community standard.
Technologies: OGC API, CoverageJSON, OpenAPI
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Chris Little
Proposed schedule: 12th of May, 13:30 - 14:00 UTC+1
Description:
The OGC AI-DGGS for Disaster Management Pilot tested, enabled, and improved AI-augmented Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS). DGGS represent locations as cells, moving beyond traditional geographic reference systems. As a result, DGGS can provide a foundation for a global localization system in which every object in the real world has a unique location identifier. DGGS are well-suited for data integration and efficient querying and analysis. Therefore, they are well suited for supporting AI-powered natural language queries. This presentation will present an overview and findings of the AI-DGGS pilot.
Technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS)
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Sina Taghavikish
Proposed schedule: 12th of May, 14:30 - 15:00 UTC+1
Description:
In this stream we'll explore the OGC API - Processes standard, which allows a server to advertise a set of predefined processes as being available for on-demand computation.
We'll use pygeoapi with a custom job manager that defers execution and monitoring of work to Prefect. Along the way we'll look at some of the capabilities this unlocks, such as controlling server load, persisting results, and using Docker to run processes in isolated environments.
We'll walk through defining a new processor, setting it up for async execution, and then kick its tires by serving it via pygeoapi — monitoring the execution through Prefect's UI as we go.
Technologies: pygeoapi, Prefect
Requirements: None
Stream Leader: Ricardo Garcia Silva (Geobeyond)
Proposed schedule: 13th of May, 09:30 - 10:00 UTC+1
Description:
Web Video Map Tracks (WebVMT) is a text-based format designed to synchronise location with video for the web - which was published by Spatial Data on the Web as a W3C Group Note in September 2023. Parallel activity in WICG DataCue community group has enhanced timed video metadata integration with HTML and improved its support in web browsers. This presentation will include guidance on how to synchronise GIMI metadata with video in HTML and a demonstration of the dash cam collision monitoring use case studied in OGC Testbed-21.
Technologies: GIMI, HEIF, MPEG, WebVMT, HTML
Requirements: None
Stream leader: Rob Smith
Proposed schedule: 13th of May, 12:00 - 12:30 UTC+1
Nigel Edmead ✉️
OGC: Nigel Edmead (Lead), Rosie Chen (Lead), Joana Simoes (Program), Gobe Hobona (Program), Scott Simmons (Program), McKenna Klapperich (Logistics), Christoper Keefe (Marketing & Communication), Richard Estephan (Sponsorship).