Presentations on Lost in Tab

Do formats exist? Towards a unified foundation for data tooling

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What if data formats didn’t need their own libraries? The cylf ecosystem leverages WebAssembly to make codecs, format drivers, and storage drivers modular, sandboxed, and fetchable on-demand. Each can be developed independently and on its own lifecycle. We’ll demo a working proof of concept.

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Vector Data

Mon, 02 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Dig into geospatial vector formats—including GeoJSON, WKT/WKB, and cloud-native GeoParquet—using Python to see in detail how vector features are stored in each format and to understand what cloud-native means for vector data.

Anatomy of a file

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Raster, vector, point cloud: every geospatial format solves the same core problems, including linearization, chunking, compression, and metadata. Let’s build a format from scratch to see these concerns in practice.

Anatomy of a file

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Do formats exist? Towards a unified foundation for data tooling

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Vector Data

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data

Sun, 30 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wonder what GDAL is doing under the hood when you read a GeoTIFF file? Doubly so when the file is a Cloud-optimized GeoTIFF (COG) on a remote server somewhere? Have you been wondering what this Zarr thing is all about and how it works? Then there’s the whole Kerchunk/VirtualiZarr indexing to get cloud-native access for non-cloud-native data formats, what’s that about?

Cloud-native geospatial is all the rage these days, and for good reason. As data sizes grow, layer counts increase, and analytical methods become more complex, the traditional download-to-the-desktop approach is quickly becoming untenable for many applications. It’s no surprise then that users are turning to cloud-based tools to scale out their analyses, or that traditional tooling is adopting new ways of finding and accessing data from cloud-based sources. But as we transition away from opening whole files to now grabbing ranges of bytes off remote servers it seems all the more important to understand exactly how cloud native data formats actually store data and what tools are doing to access it.

Redefining cloud native with the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A presentation of the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol (CCRP) as part of the ESIP winter meeting session “Bridging the Cloud Divide - Part 1”, which highlighted new advancements in supporting cloud adoption, from guides and standards to new formats and services.

For the full story behind CCRP, see the blog post Redefining cloud native with the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol.

The importance of community in geospatial

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Transcript of the talk as delivered:

Hello everyone – or I suppose I should say bula! Kia ora! Namaste! As-salamu alaykum!

I know from the introduction yesterday I’ve missed many greetings. So find me and tell me your greetings and tell me about where you are from, I know I have a lot to learn about all your cultures here in the pacific. This is my first time here, and it is a long way from where I live in Oregon in the United States. I thank you all for your welcomeness and hospitality.

State of STAPI: A community tasking standard

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Explore STAPI, a specification for a Sensor Tasking API. We’ll highlight recent developments, showcase the open-source projects being developed in the ecosystem, and share the community’s vision of increased interoperability driving the next generation of geospatial workflows.

Is Zarr the new COG?

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Zarr is gaining traction in geospatial workflows—but is it replacing COG, complementing it, or something else entirely? We’ll unpack the formats’ shared foundations, explore their tradeoffs, and offer a path toward better community guidance, tooling, and support.

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Vector Data

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Is Zarr the new COG?

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

State of STAPI: A community tasking standard

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Let's solve the problem of object storage

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Object storage transformed data at planetary scale, giving us cheap, durable, elastic storage. But in geospatial, it also turned chunking into everyone’s problem. Misaligned queries waste time, compute, and money, while producers struggle to optimize datasets for all users. This talk reframes our problems with chunking as a limitation of the object model itself. We’ll look at why object storage makes chunking visible, what that means for usability and efficiency, and how the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol (CCRP) could restore transparent, efficient access — this time at cloud scale.

On-ramp to CNG

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A day-long capacity-building workshop for professionals new to working with cloud-native formats and workflows: an introduction to cloud-native geospatial for Earth observation, followed by a deep dive into cloud-native raster formats.

Exploring Cloud Native Geospatial Data Formats: Hands-on with Raster Data

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A virtual delivery of the cloud-native raster formats workshop for an Oceania geospatial user group: a survey of the cloud-native geospatial landscape followed by hands-on exploration of how COG and Zarr store data, reading both by hand from cloud sources using just Python.

Earth-Search: A STAC API of Open datasets on AWS

Thu, 05 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Earth-Search is a publicly-accessible SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) index and API providing data discovery and access for several major geospatial data collections as part of the AWS Registry of Open Data (RODA), including Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat Collection 2, and NAIP imagery. Items are backed by data assets accessible in cloud-native formats such as Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG).

This talk will provide an overview of the Earth-Search STAC catalog, how to search it to discover items, and how best to access the backing data assets. We’ll look at recent changes to catalog and discuss the progress and challenges of the Sentinel-2 reprocessing/reindexing effort. We’ll also briefly discuss the architecture of the data orchestration pipeline and what open source tooling underlies its operation.

Community Standards and Satellite Tasking

Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Community standards are specifications that are created through informal organization and are then widely adopted by a larger group. The STAC specification and Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs are examples of community specifications that have become de facto standards for geospatial interoperability. This talk will examine how the process of developing community standards differs from traditional standards development and how to drive adoption. Numerous examples of successful community standards will be presented.

In addition, we will provide a case study of a current effort - that of STAPI - a specification for satellite tasking, or more specifically, an API for how users can order data from the future from satellite platforms. We have been spearheading an effort to develop such a specification and after two sprints we presented at the last FOSS4G in Kosovo. This prompted a third sprint in Europe, bringing together an even larger community. Working with government groups, commercial satellite operators, and data integrators, these sprints have worked toward developing a specification as well as implementations for several commercial providers, as well as ordering APIs for public datasets.

Deep Dive into Cloud-Native Geospatial Raster Formats

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wonder what GDAL is doing under the hood when you read a GeoTIFF file? Doubly so when the file is a Cloud-optimized GeoTIFF (COG) on a remote server somewhere? Have you been wondering what this new GeoZarr thing is all about and how it actually works? Then there’s the whole Kerchunk/VirtualiZarr indexing to get cloud-native access for non-cloud-native data formats, what’s that about?

Cloud-native geospatial is all the rage these days, and for good reason. As file sizes grow, layer counts increase, and analytical methods become more complex, the traditional download-to-the-desktop approach is quickly becoming untenable for many applications. It’s no surprise then that users are turning to cloud-based tools such as Dask to scale out their analyses, or that traditional tooling is adopting new ways of finding and accessing data from cloud-based sources. But as we transition away from opening whole files to now grabbing ranges of bytes off remote servers it seems all the more important to understand exactly how cloud native data formats actually store data and what tools are doing to access it.

Planet-scale raster catalogs with STAC

Tue, 18 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs (STAC) is a set of standards defining geospatial metadata, catalog organization, and search APIs. With a growing set of tooling and support from the open-source community, STAC is making it easier and more efficient to discover, search, and analyze geospatial data. Element 84 operates EarthSearch, a STAC catalog of the complete Sentinel-2 archive in Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format, as part of the Registry of Open Data on AWS.

Interfacing ArcGIS Desktop and GIS Server for Web-Based Basin Analysis GIS

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The Center for Spatial Analysis and Research (CSAR) at PSU is currently engaged in a multi-year agreement with the USDA-NRCS, National Water and Climate Center (NWCC) to develop a spatial decision support system (SDSS) for improving water forecast accuracy. One of the goals of the SDSS is to make the GIS data used in the analysis available to government and public users. We designed and developed a data repository framework (eBAGIS) that integrates the geoprocessing capabilities of an existing desktop basin analysis GIS (BAGIS) and an internet-based GIS server to share the basin analysis GIS data. This presentation introduces the PostgreSQL-based GIS repository developed in Django, a high-level Python web framework, and the REST APIs developed for interfacing with ArcGIS Desktop addins implemented with VB .NET framework. The internet GIS repository allows NWCC water supply forecasters and hydrologists to upload their basin analysis GIS data created on their desktop ArcMap and share these data with water managers and the public over the internet.

Crop classification using multi-temporal MODIS vegetation indices

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The ability to map agricultural lands by crop type is crucial to understanding the geography and dynamics of land use/land cover change and global production. Existing remote sensing methods that can differentiate crops by type require high spatial resolution data, high spectral resolution data, or extensive ground truth information to develop training sites, none of which are freely available for much of the world. As an alternative, I propose a new method of crop classification using multi-temporal MODIS vegetation indices as a base image from which to extract crops using their phenologies. I test and refine this method in Kansas, USA using the USDA Cropland Data Layer as reference. I discuss the numerous factors that effect the application and accuracy of the method, the method’s current limitations, and how the method might be further tested and refined.

HydrantTools: An ArcGIS Python Toolbox

Wed, 16 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000