Open Development Standards (ODS) is an open format for the data behind an assessment of a physical development: what is built or run, the conditions around it, the rules that apply, and how each result was reached.

One ODS document holds a whole assessment: a wellsite and its compressor, the dwelling nearby, the night's weather, the regulator's limits, the measurements and calculations, and the verdict. Any tool can read it, and anyone can check how each result was reached.

What ODS is for

  • One document that any tool can read.
  • Every result traceable to its inputs, its rules and its method.
  • Rules that anyone can run: a regulator's limits as a profile that a program checks.
  • A Core that knows no domain, and a module for each domain, starting with acoustics.

What ODS is not

  • A product's database: each product keeps its own storage and maps to ODS at its edges.
  • A calculation engine: ODS records which algorithm ran and what it made.
  • A GIS: ODS does not edit, analyse or serve spatial data. It records places and shapes as GeoJSON, with the coordinate system, the accuracy and the source that a GIS needs to use them.
  • A report template: a report is one way to show an assessment.

Four pillars

A document has four pillars. Each answers one question, and each record lives in the one pillar that answers its question. Other records point at it by id.

Risk

What risks must the development manage, and which rules manage them? It holds frameworks, profiles.

Open Risk

Context

What is being assessed? It holds stakeholders, jurisdictions, permits, projects, features, instruments.

Open Context

Environment

What conditions surround it? It holds ambient, terrain, weather, hydrology.

Open Environment

Methodology

How is it assessed, and what was found? It holds algorithms, flows, assumptions, evidence, traces, assessments.

Open Methodology
Building blocksDatatypes and parts that any record can hold

Amounts

ValueAxisStatistic

Place

LocationGeometryCoordinate reference systemPositioningGeographic identifierLinear referenceOriginal

Time

Interval

Identity and links

EntityIdentifierLinkCitation

Facts and logic

PropertyExpressionFindingOrigin
ODS Acoustics
The standard on one page. Each box links to its schema.

Start here

To work with ODS data, start with one of these.

Read the schemas

Draft

Every record ODS defines, with its fields, rules and examples, and the code lists its fields take.

Browse the schemas

Write a package

Draft

The package format says what a package holds, how its files are hashed and what a reader must check before it trusts them.

Read the package format

Check your output

Run the shared test vectors to prove your canonical JSON matches every other implementation, byte for byte.

Get the test vectors

Open a package

Draft

Drop an ODS package into the viewer. It checks every file against its hash, then shows each run step by step. Nothing leaves your device.

Open the viewer

Status

ODS is a draft. The schemas can still change before the first release; each schema page shows its version and its changes. Each page is marked Ready, Draft or Pending; a pending page is not built yet, so nothing links to it. The schemas and code are open under the Apache License 2.0, and the specification text under CC BY 4.0. Licence and governance says how ODS is versioned and maintained.

ODS started at OpenCycle, a compliance platform in Calgary, Alberta. If you find an error, an omission or something to improve, write to us.