11-20, 10:05–10:10 (Pacific/Auckland), WG403
Object storage gave us scale, durability, and low cost–the foundation of cloud-native geospatial. But what if it’s also our biggest problem? This talk explores why the object model fails multidimensional datasets, and how the Coalesced Chunk Retrieval Protocol could restore seamless user experience at cloud scale.
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.
Jarrett Keifer is a Senior Geospatial Software Engineer at Element 84, a commercial geospatial consultancy that uses open-source to build effective customer solutions. His interests include education and outreach, geospatial data formats, and high-performance systems/network programming. He enjoys designing systems to operate at scale, particularly to support remote sensing data processing and earth science applications, and has over ten years of experience contributing to open source projects.