2026-09-03 –, Conference Management Room2
Waystones is an open-source tool for designing geospatial data models and deploying production-ready OGC APIs. By automating the configuration of pygeoapi and QGIS Server, it enables organizations to meet High-Value Dataset (HVD) requirements and share standards-compliant data directly to the cloud.
Public sector organizations are currently facing a "deployment complexity gap." While regulations like the EU High-Value Datasets (HVD) Implementing Regulation mandate API access to geospatial data, the technical reality of publishing a compliant OGC API stack is daunting. It requires coordinating spatial databases, feature API servers (pygeoapi), map rendering engines (QGIS Server), and transformation scripts—each with unique configuration hurdles.
Waystones is a browser-based application designed to democratize this infrastructure. It provides a visual, end-to-end workflow from model design to live service deployment:
Visual Model & Style Editor: Users define layers, field constraints, and spatial relationships through an intuitive UI. Waystones automatically generates the necessary QGIS project files and SLD styles, removing the need for desktop GIS expertise during the publishing phase.
Standards-First Deployment: Waystones targets modern OGC API standards (Features, Maps) by auto-generating a Docker Compose deployment kit, compatible with any container hosting environment including Fly.io, with a cloud-native architecture built on Parquet and FlatGeobuf served from object storage via DuckDB — enabling fast cold starts without persistent volumes. It bridges the gap between raw data (GeoPackage/PostGIS) and a live, standards-compliant service in minutes.
STAC Catalog Generation: Waystones automatically generates STAC-compliant catalogs alongside deployed services, exposing GeoPackage, FlatGeobuf, and Parquet endpoints — making datasets discoverable to both human users and automated harvesters.
AI-Assisted Discovery: The platform leverages optional LLM integration to automate the "metadata chore," generating field descriptions and abstracts to ensure services are not just live, but discoverable and well-documented.
Waystones ensures that foundational geospatial infrastructure remains open, interoperable, and accessible to organizations of all sizes. This session will include a live demonstration of transforming a raw GeoPackage into a production-ready OGC API endpoint.
Waystones GitHub: https://github.com/henrik716/waystones
QGIS Server Documentation: https://docs.qgis.org/latest/en/docs/server_manual/
pygeoapi Official Site: https://pygeoapi.io/
OGC API – Features Standard: https://ogcapi.ogc.org/features/
EU High-Value Datasets (HVD) Implementing Regulation: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32023R0138
Indicate what is (are) the open source project(s) essential in your talk:Waystones is built upon the following key open-source projects:
- pygeoapi: The core OGC API – Features server implementation.
- QGIS Server: Used for high-fidelity WMS rendering and map project management.
- GDAL/OGR: Specifically the GDAL3.js port, used for client-side data transformation and schema inference.
*React & Vite: The foundational frontend framework for the browser-based editor.
I make my conference contribution available under the CC BY 4.0 license. The conference contribution comprises the abstract, the text contribution for the conference proceedings, the presentation materials as well as the video recording and live transmission of the presentation:
Henrik Gulliksen Schüller is a self-proclaimed "Map Guru" and Product Owner at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. Armed with a Master’s in Geomatics from NMBU and a legendary distaste for messy manual configurations, he created Waystones to make OGC API deployment actually enjoyable. Henrik is dedicated to proving that publishing authoritative geospatial data shouldn't require a backend degree. While fluent in English and Norwegian, his elementary Japanese will be put to the test in Hiroshima—where he hopes his maps are much more reliable than his grammar.