rasdaman newsletter 10/2025
OGC Adopts WCS Enhancement
October 2025 -- OGC now has adopted an enhancement to the OGC datacube / coverage suite, Web Coverage Service (WCS), written by Constructor University, Germany. This underlines that WCS remains being maintained actively and advanced continuously.
WCS-Interpolation is the component of the WCS suite which defines how coverage / datacube servers apply interpolation in case request coordinates do not exactly match the stored points. Further, interpolation is relevant for rescaling and reprojection of coverages.
The enhancement adopted now allows retrieval of datacube slices at coordinates not sitting on the grid. The server will apply the interpolation method chosen to obtain the intermediate coverage values. One important application is along the time axis: users do not need to know any longer the exact timestamps where data are available, but can request timeslices at any time point in between. Notably, this enhancement retains complete backwards compatibility.
"WCS and the coverage model have always been under active maintenance and development, and will remain also in future - any investment in WCS-based services is an investment into the future", explains the main editor, Prof. Dr. Peter Baumann from Constructor University, and continues, "WCS has a strong implementation basis, is in active use worldwide on Petabytes of datacubes, and the authoritative datacube standard". The underlying coverage model is adopted widely by ISO, OGC, and EU INSPIRE. The most up-to date coverage / datacube standard version is under publication as ISO DIS 19123-2:2025.
As a unique feature, WCS has a formal semantics definition given by ISO 19123-3 / OGC Abstract Topic 6.3 giving a stable, sound fundament for implementers. Additionally, a detailed, well-curated compliance test suite can check implementations for correct behavior in all facets. Official Reference WCS Implementation is the rasdaman datacube engine which furthermore supports the WCPS, WMS and WMTS standards as well as the openEO and GeoDataCube draft specifications still in progress.
The WCS Interpolation standard is available on the official standards landing page.
contact: Prof. Dr. Peter Baumann