OGC NetCDF SWG Presentation: The GeoZarr challenge

Standards building is hard, but we are in this together The GeoZarr Challenge Metadata conventions are essential for interoperability and preservation The community has been building GeoZarr since 2023, based on an ESA-sponsored draft 2015-2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 December 2015: Zarr community project January 2022: GeoZarr draft proposed for ESA funded cloud native database January 2023: NASA picks up the topic, Informal GeoZarr meetings start, repo moved to zarr developers github June 2022: Zarr 2.0 adopted as OGC Community Standard November 2023: GeoZarr becomes an official OGC SWG February 2024: GeoZarr sprint held in NY, overviews and interoperability table work begins April 2025: Critical PRs submitted providing more complete initial specification mapping with conformance classes Metadata conventions are hard to build Metadata conventions are hard to build well Zarr brings together many communities, leading to challenges melding approaches COG users rightly love implicit coordinates and overviews Image source: https://www.kitware.com/deciphering-cloud-optimized-geotiffs/ CF users rightly love comprehensive physical metadata, standardized vocabulary, and support for alternative grid structures Image source: https://code.mpimet.mpg.de/boards/1/topics/12432 In April, Christophe proposed a composable system to meet all user needs