Cheers to 2025
Well, 2025 was quite a fun and productive year! Here’s the rundown on my last 12 months:
WMO: WIS2 went operational on 01 January 2025, and things ran relatively smoothly overall. Check out our Global Services listing! WIS2 currently has over 100 WIS2 Nodes and 19 Global Services, and we continue to refine and tweak the Technical Regulations baseline. We also published the first version of the WIS2 Cookbook, check it out for some practical examples on working with WIS2. wis2box reached 1.0 status and continues to power ~60 installations across the infrastructure. Best of all, the entire activity is stuffed with Open Standards and considerable FOSS implementation of them!
We also made considerable progress on defining the Global Replay Service as well as the Sensor Centre concept (all of which will have FOSS Reference Implementations).
Finally, the Task Team on Open Source Software kicked off this year, with the aim of providing a FOSS framework for WMO Members and Secretariat.
OGC: at long last, OGC API – Records – Part 1: Core was released this year! OGC API now has a formal search capability defined. Check out all the software implementations already available. Don’t see yours here? Feel free to add 🙂 The PubSub SWG continued to chug along, and we are now at the point to start testing the draft specification and further refine with the relevant OGC API SWGs. We also moved forward on the RODEO EDR profile, which will become an OGC MetOcean profile for EDR, allowing for increased EDR interoperability across the weather community.
OSGeo: FOSS4G Europe (Mostar) and the Global (Auckland) were personal highlights, having delivered numerous talks and workshops on Geopython and pygeoapi with great teams as always. I was honoured to present the Sol Katz award to Nyall Dawson at the closing ceremony (congrats again Nyall!). Being part of the Board of Directors continued as a motivation to improve and sustain OSGeo, with emphasis on standards
pygeoapi: We rocked 4 releases this year, adding goodies like STAC API, dataset specific templating, transactions for PostgreSQL, i18n support for Arabic, OpenShift support, STAC API and much more Monthly online meetings continued as planned, and the project continues to grow and mature as an OGC API Reference Implementation, as well as powering some high profile data sharing services.
pycsw: lots of action this year, which included: numerous deep STAC API and CQL2 improvements, as well as significant repository abstraction work (in progress) to enable easier integration with NoSQL backends such as Elasticsearch and Solr. We were also the first to implement OGC API – Publish/Subscribe (draft) and continue to refine things as the draft specification evolves. We also cut another 3.0 beta release as we march towards OGC API – Records CITE compliance.
WOUDC: we released version 2.0 of the data centre this year, which included a major architecture updates, moving from WMS/WFS/CSW to OGC APIs (using pygeoapi) and a shiny new UI. We also achieved connectivity to WIS2 as the first GAW data centre to publish atmospheric composition data to the infrastructure. Kudos to the entire team and keep up the great work!
MSC: our national weather/water/climate API platform continues to grow. We are getting closer and closer to operational dissemination of our NWP data via EDR and Zarr – stay tuned! Our efforts on MSC’s WIS2 implementation continue to lead, with the most data and metadata on WIS2. Great job to the entire team!
On the personal front:
- having done my share of code sprints in my worklife, 2025 was the time for a personal sprint on health. Powered by an extremely strict diet, I lost 60 (sixty) pounds in 2025 and feel better than ever. A big thanks to my wife, family, friends and colleagues for their support
- another year (circa 2012) of not smoking (yes I continue to remind myself)
- home renovation: our major project took me out of action for a few months, and I’m thankful that it is completed so we can return to normal life again
Looking ahead to 2026, a few key items:
- WMO: INFCOM-4 will take place in Q4, with numerous items for discussion and approval (WIS2 Sensor Centres, Global Replay Service, the WMO FOSS Guide, and WCMP2 KPI definitions)
- WMDR2: WMO’s station metadata standard is getting a reboot which will move it closer to WCMP2 and OGC API – Records, stay tuned for the new specification and its Reference Implementation!
- pygeoapi: look for the addition of OGC API – Publish/Subscribe workflow, maturation of OGC API – Maps support, along with numerous other improvements
- OSGeo: I’m looking forward to the global event in Hiroshima (August), as well as serving the Board of Directors with focus on Standards, SAC and growth/sustainability. As well, I’m looking forward to the 2026 Joint OGC-OSGeo-ASF Code Sprint (which returns after not eventing in 2025)
- GeoHealthCheck: the project is getting some recent love, and look for more developments as we work towards refactoring for the long term
Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2026!
