GeoJSON

Howard Butler, Martin Daly, Allan Doyle, Sean Gillies, Stefan Hagen, Tim Schaub, Erik Wilde

What is GeoJSON?

  • Structured information about geospatially-bounded things (aka "features") and their properties
  • Using JavaScript Object Notation
  • Simplifies as much as possible

GeoJSON History

  • Discovered on Freenode: #openlayers and #gdal, late 2006
  • Informal WG launched 2007-03-15
  • 375 Messages later...
  • Format Specification published 2008-06-18
  • Informal WG moved to GitHub 2011-09-22
  • draft-butler-geojson-00 submitted 2014-01-08

Where we are now

  • GeoJSON is improving data interchange
  • Maps abound, processes are evolving
  • Intense demand for improvement

Influences

  • OGC Simple Features Specification
  • W3C Basic Geo Vocabulary
  • GeoRSS
  • Atom

Related Work

  • GML, GPX, KML
  • IETF geopriv WG (RFC 5870 - geo URI scheme)
  • Schema.org
  • JSON-LD

Related Work

W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web WG

  • Not developing technologies
  • Considering GeoJSON

Applications

Almost any kind of geospatial JSON data interchange

  • HTTP CRUD and JavaScript APIs
  • Spatial database queries
  • Alerting and geo-fencing protocols
  • Defining coverage of networked mobile apps
  • Engineering basis for geo protocol buffers

Why the IETF?

  • Agreement with the IETF mission and its principles
  • Desire to have GeoJSON join other JSON RFCs
  • History of interaction between informal GeoJSON WG and geopriv WG

Proposed WG Scope

  • Narrow as possible
  • Start with draft-butler-geojson-05
  • More precisely specify the GeoJSON format
  • Document best practices discovered since 2008
  • Investigate implications of recent JSON RFC 7159
  • Alignment with work such as JSON Text Sequences and I-JSON (RFC 7464/7493)

How much work remains?

  • Extensibility of GeoJSON
  • Consideration of other geometry primitives
  • Re-consideration of coordinate systems
  • All GeoJSON authors approve
  • 5 of 6 raise their hands to do the remaining work

Links