How can PHP developers ensure consistent character encoding when displaying data from external sources like OpenGeoDB in HTML?

To ensure consistent character encoding when displaying data from external sources like OpenGeoDB in HTML, PHP developers can use the `mb_convert_encoding()` function to convert the data to the desired character encoding before outputting it in the HTML document.

// Assuming $data contains the data from OpenGeoDB
$data = mb_convert_encoding($data, 'UTF-8', 'auto');

echo $data;