11-04, 14:30–15:00 (America/New_York), Lake Thoreau
Discover how Microsoft’s Planetary Computer evolved into a petabyte-scale platform for open environmental data. Learn how you can access over 140 open datasets using community-driven standards to power your own applications.
Since its launch in 2020, Microsoft’s Planetary Computer has grown into one of the world’s largest geospatial platforms, hosting a data catalog with over 50 petabytes of open-access earth observation and environmental data. Accessed billions of times each month, the Planetary Computer helps researchers, policymakers, and businesses develop new solutions to climate, biodiversity, and sustainability challenges.
This session will explore three key areas: (1) what the Planetary Computer offers today, (2) how we built and scaled it, and (3) what’s new and what’s next for the FOSS4G community.
For those that are new to the Planetary Computer, this session will open with a brief tour of the Planetary Computer’s Data Catalog and APIs. We will showcase the diversity of open-access datasets within the Planetary Computer and highlight how anyone can use its APIs to perform planetary-scale analyses.
Next, this session will cover the programmatic and technical challenges we had to overcome to build and maintain a planetary-scale data platform. We’ll discuss the importance of collaboration and community engagement in overcoming these challenges. We’ll highlight why building upon and contributing to community standards, such as the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) specification, continues to be central to our strategy.
Finally, we’ll share updates on new datasets, improved accessibility, and how we’re enabling tighter collaboration between geospatial data scientists, engineers, and business users. We’ll also spotlight emerging standards and technologies that we’re actively evaluating and encourage the FOSS4G community to explore as well.
Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or decision-maker, this session will offer practical insights into how you can leverage the Planetary Computer in your own work and how we can collectively advance open geospatial technology to meet planetary-scale challenges.
Taylor is a Senior Technical Program Manager at Microsoft focused on building digital infrastructure for planet Earth. He is currently Program Manager for Microsoft’s Planetary Computer, an open, cross-domain geospatial data platform for transforming the way we measure, monitor, and model Earth’s natural systems.
Prior to joining Microsoft, Taylor worked with a broad range of organizations including the United Nations, University of Oxford, Stanford University, and numerous national governments to develop analytic solutions focused on issues ranging from disaster management to polio eradication. Taylor also recently taught graduate courses focused on data visualization as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.