Open Data

Tilebox not only provides access to your own, private datasets but also to a growing number of public datasets. These datasets are available to all users of Tilebox and are a great way to get started and prototype your applications even before data from your own satellites is available.

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Accessing Open Data through Tilebox

Accessing open data datasets in Tilebox is as easy as accessing your own datasets. Because Tilebox already ingested the required metadata for each available dataset for you, you can simply query, preview, and download the data. This allows you to take advantage of performance optimizations and simplify your workflows.

By accessing and implementing your applications using the datasets API, it’s easy to start prototyping your applications and workflows and then later on switch to your own private data once it becomes available.

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Storage Providers

Tilebox do not host the actual open data satellite products, but instead rely on publicly accessible storage providers which provide data access. Using the Tilebox API, you can query the relevant metadata for each dataset and then use Tilebox storage API to access the actual data.

Below is a list of the storage providers that Tilebox currently support.

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Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF)

The Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) is a NASA-funded research center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. ASF supports a wide variety of research and applications using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and related remote sensing technologies. ASF is part of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

ASF provides access to different SAR datasets, such as the European Remote-Sensing Satellite (ERS). Tilebox currently supports the following ASF datasets:

• ERS SAR

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Accessing ASF data

You can query ASF metadata without any account, because Tilebox already indexed and ingested the relevant metadata. To access and download the actual satellite products, you need an ASF account.

You can create an account for ASF by choosing Sign In in the ASF Vertex Search Tool.

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Further reading

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Copernicus Data Space

The Copernicus Data Space is an open ecosystem that provides free instant access to a wide range of data and services from the Copernicus Sentinel missions.

Tilebox currently supports the following Copernicus Data Space datasets:

• Sentinel 1
• Sentinel 2
• Sentinel 3
• Sentinel 5P
• Landsat 8

To download data products from the Copernicus Data Space after querying them using the Tilebox API you need to create an account and then generate S3 Credentials here.

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Umbra Space

Umbra satellites generate the highest resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery ever offered from space, up to 16-cm resolution. SAR can capture images at night, through cloud cover, smoke, and rain. SAR is unique in its abilities to monitor changes. The Open Data Program (ODP) features over twenty diverse time-series locations that are updated frequently, allowing users to experiment with SAR’s capabilities. They offer single-looked spotlight mode in either 16cm, 25cm, 35cm, 50cm, or 1m resolution, and multi-looked spotlight mode. The ODP also features an assorted collection of over 250+ images and counting of locations around the world, ranging from emergency response, to gee-whiz sites.

Tilebox currently supports the following Umbra Space datasets:

• Umbra Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)

All data is provided with a Creative Commons License (CC by 4.0), which gives you the right to do just about anything you want with it.

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Sample Code

Here is a sample code snippets that shows how to access open data using the Tilebox Python client.

• Alaska Satellite Facility
• Copernicus Data Space
• Umbra Space

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Further reading