pydggsapi (GitHub repository) is an open-source web API to discover DGGS datasets through the OGC DGGS API standard.
The increasing popularity over the past few years in using the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) for geoscience applications demonstrates the demand for an easy and standardised way of publishing and accessing DGGS data. The need is perfectly addressed by the OGC DGGS API standard, which emphasises answering the questions of “What is here?” and “Where is it?”.
With the purpose above, the Landscape and Geoinformatics lab, in collaboration with Francis Charette Migneault from the Computer Research Institute of Montréal (CRIM), has developed an open-source web API, pydggsapi, which adheres to the OGC DGGS API standard, enabling users to discover DGGS datasets. Users can explore data in various types of DGGRS (Discrete Global Grid Reference System), such as IGEO7, H3, IVEA7H, and rHEALPix, with a simple web query. The API endpoints allow users to make queries on the area of interest by:
- Retrieve a list of zones at a specific refinement level for the area of interest using a bounding box (where is it?)
- Retrieve data for a particular zone using the zone data retrieval query (what is here?)
The above two queries demonstrated the most basic queries that users can perform with the API. There are several advanced features, such as the CQL2 filter and the datetime query parameter, that allow users to work with custom data queries and on temporal datasets. Users can find more details about the queries in the example notebook (documentation).
In addition to the DGGS API endpoints, users can explore the collections provided by the API instances integrated with the OGC Collection API. Another feature of our API implementation is the tiles-api. This API endpoint allows users to easily visualise DGGS datasets with any GIS software by simply adding vector tiles.
Pydggsapi is still under development. We keep improving the functionality and usability through various use cases from different disciplines.
Tik presented pydggsapi at the OGC AI-DGGS Pilot final workshop
