FOSS4G NA 2023 | Towards a Cloud Native Spatial Data Infrastructure - Chris Holmes

Summary:

Chris Holmes, the keynote speaker at FOSS4G NA 2023, discussed the progress made in building a queryable Earth and highlighted the need for a Cloud Native Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). He emphasized the importance of making geospatial data easily accessible and usable, and proposed a simplified approach to SDI called the Cloud Native SDI.

Highlights:

- Chris Holmes discussed the vision of a queryable Earth, where users can ask specific questions about the state of the planet and receive notifications.

- He acknowledged the progress made in foundation geospatial technologies, but noted that more work is needed to make global data sets available for querying.

- Chris Holmes highlighted the need for a Cloud Native SDI that simplifies the sharing and use of geospatial information.

- He emphasized the importance of simplicity in the SDI architecture and mentioned the Cloud Native Geospatial standards as a step in the right direction.

- Chris Holmes introduced two mature standards: PM tiles, which enables instant visualization and styling of geospatial data, and Geopar, a simple standard for geospatial columns on top of Parquet.

- He discussed the potential of PM tiles for filtering and searching through large amounts of image footprints, and the benefits of Geopar in terms of smaller and faster geospatial formats.

- Chris Holmes highlighted the ability of Parquet to partition huge data sets, enabling a more intuitive geospatial workflow for querying and downloading specific data.