Massive [Earth Observation] imagery datasets are now available publicly and freely. However, free, very high-resolution imagery (<1m/pixel) is expensive and not easily accessible. Such imagery is particularly critical to aid disasters, but still, we are struggling to find and use it. Why is this the case? Where is very high-resolution imagery, and where is the one that enables us to create solutions freely to contribute to society?

Starting from the Türkiye & Syria Earthquake on February 6, 2023, I've contributed to OpenAerialMap (openaerialmap.org) by processing and uploading Maxar imagery for disasters, such as Morocco and Nepal.

I'd like to critically discuss the current state of VHR imagery and present my experience, challenges, and suggestions for improved availability in the context of disaster mapping. I want to touch upon the following topics:

• Where is very high-resolution imagery?
• How is it being used?
• Why are they not free to use?
• Still, where can we reach them?
• Why do we need better access?

STAC is a well-known and acknowledged spatiotemporal metadata standard within the community. There are many applications with open-source data; however, there are few adoptions by premium satellite imagery providers. At UP42, we adopted STAC as the core metadata system within our applications that defines how we store data. Last year, we presented how we designed a standard data management system with STAC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVE5VZzoOqM&t=1s

As of last year's talk, we developed another catchy concept to standardize data access and processing. We designed a Cloud-Native Asset Model combining existing concepts such as STAC and COG, where we transform all files delivered by providers into a somewhat standard-ish format using GDAL extensively. We want to continue updating the community about our experience and share the takeaways.

More information:
- https://up42.com/data-management
- https://up42.com/blog/introducing-a-cloud-native-asset-model