11-04, 11:00–11:30 (America/New_York), Lake Audubon
Learn how eoAPI helped transform a trusted humanitarian aerial imagery platform, enabling standardized search and dynamic visualization through cloud-native solutions. We’ll explore core technologies behind eoAPI and share our experience deploying and extending it within live systems.
The Challenge
OpenAerialMap (OAM), a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) project, is an open data platform providing access to high-resolution satellite and drone imagery. It was initially developed in 2015 and in the decade since it has served the community well, but systems had become increasingly difficult to maintain. In the absence of more widely adopted community standards, they had initially developed their own metadata catalog and were therefore responsible for maintaining it. Older technologies often stop receiving support after a certain time, as well. HOT is a lean team that works among the open source community, so maintainability is key.
The Solution
Moving OAM’s metadata catalog to the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification made arguably the biggest impact in maintainability by allowing HOT to lean on community-supported solutions. The spec alone would cover the metadata schema and inform some of the storage design, but wide adoption amongst satellite imagery providers and major space agencies has helped drive further development.
eoAPI takes it one step further by tying a selection of STAC-compatible services together into a feature-rich earth observation backend. The core eoAPI deployment stands up metadata, raster, and vector services, all backed by a PostgreSQL database optimized for STAC. This serves as a trusted foundation for further development specific to OAM’s needs since HOT no longer has to act as sole maintainer for any of the discrete services or their interconnections.
We’ll discuss eoAPI through the lens of OAM as an integrated, open-source solution, comprising of:
- Custom STAC extension for migrating legacy geospatial data to STAC
- pgSTAC + STAC-FastAPI for spatiotemporal search
- TiTiler for on-demand tile generation directly from source imagery
And we’ll discuss other technical highlights of working with HOT and OAM:
- Integrated external catalogues in addition to OAM
- Built a prototype frontend using MapLibre that connected directly to eoAPI
- Backend services are deployed via Helm, streamlining deployment and configuration
- Deployment monitoring via custom metrics and dashboards
Impact / Takeaway
We’ll share live products, code examples, and the architectural decisions that helped us build this new version of OpenAerialMap. Attendees will learn why eoAPI is a good fit for geospatial work flows and even some practical strategies for modernizing their geospatial infrastructure using eoAPI.
Indraneel Purohit is currently a Software Engineer at Development Seed, where he builds frontend web applications for NASA and other partners to visualize and analyze Earth observation data. Previously, he served as a Software Engineer at Two Sigma's Data Clinic, where he led engineering teams on geospatial data projects and managed nonprofit partnerships, including launching the Mobility Database API with MobilityData. Prior to that, he was Senior Software Engineer at Princeton University's Electoral Innovation Lab, where he led development of the Redistricting Report Card platform that reached 500,000 page views during the 2021 redistricting cycle. Earlier in his career, he was the first employee at SharedStreets, where he led the Road Closures project, and spent three years as Software Engineer 2 at AppNexus leading native ad management development. Indraneel is a recognized geospatial technology expert who has presented at conferences including State of the Map, SXSW, and UN Maps. Indraneel Purohit has over 10 years of experience as a software engineer with extensive expertise in geospatial data visualization, web mapping technologies, civic technology, and building data platforms for social impact.