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. 🌍 #CloudNativeSDI #GeospatialData #PMtiles #Geopar #FOSS4GNA2023 #geospatial #gis #opensource #OSGeo #foss4g #geoint