Urthecast APIs

Overview and Demos

Gus Ireland

Open Austin

This presentation "borrowed" from:

Alex Bain

Senior Software Architect

alex@urthecast.com

@alexsbain

Overview

Urthecast APIs enable developers to build custom geospatial applications

Foundational layer for apps - internal and external

Open Source

Urthecast APIs adhere to open standards

APIs are built with open source software

Launch APIs

Archive

Areas of Interest

Events

Satellite Tracker

Map Tile Service

API Key and Secret

Before we begin, need to add an API key and secret

Archive API

Searchable archive of all imagery on platform

Multiple sensors - Theia, Landsat-8 on launch

Filter by: satellite, sensor, cloud coverage, sun elevation angle, area of interest, season, and more

Bonus: Map Tile Service requests use these same Archive filters

Examples

Areas of Interest

Monitor areas of the planet

Persistent data flow

Use an AOI to filter Archive / Satellite Tracker

Track events happening within your AOI

Examples

Create an Austin AOI

GeoJSON:

{"name":"Austin","geometry":{"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-98.44651,30.29169],[-98.14199,30.75718],[-96.760639,30.57719],[-97.34582,29.75514],[-98.44651,30.29169]]]}}
                        

Create AOI

 

 


                    

Areas of Interest + Archive

How many scenes intersect with our AOI?

 


                        

Next capture opportunity from Landsat-8?

 


                        

Event Streams

Tracking activity within your AOI

Stream of events happening on the platform

Launch event type: New imagery available

(more to come: AIS, earthquakes, fires, deforestation)

Examples

What are the most recent events on the Urthecast platform?


                    

What are the most recent events for our Austin AOI?


                    

Satellite Tracker

Query past, present, predicted position of satellites

Access TLE data for all tracked satellites

Forecasts - see capture opportunities for all sensors historically or up to 14 days in the future

Examples

Where is the ISS, right now?


                        

Where is Landsat8?


                        

TLEs - Two Line Element sets

Get latest ISS TLE


                    

Get latest Landsat8 TLE


                    

Map Tile Service

Normalized map tiles from all imagery in the archive

Filter the imagery being shown with Archive queries

Multiple renderers to showcase data behind pixels

Launching with: True RGB, NDVI, False color NIR, NDWI, EVI

Demo 1:

Map Tile Service Renderers

True RGB

NDVI

False color NIR

NDWI

EVI

Demo 2

Comparing change over time

March 2015 - True RGB

March 2015 - NDVI

March 2015 - False Color NIR

March 2015 - NDWI

March 2015 - EVI

August 2015 - True RGB

August 2015 - NDVI

August 2015 - False Color NIR

August 2015 - NDWI

August 2015 - EVI

Demo 3

Application: Drought

Lake Travis, TX

Feb 2015

September 2015

Application: Fire

Bastrop Fire

July 2015

October 2015

Data is Powerful

One thing to read in the news

Another to have access to up to date imagery

AOIs + Events = real time updates

Map Tile Service

Foundation for mapping applications

Works on smart watches, phones, tablets, desktops, web

Flexible

Custom renderers = extremely powerful

Conclusion

Urthecast APIs provide you with infrastructure to build custom mapping applications.

... and this is just the beginning.

Thanks

Get the code:

https://github.com/urthecast/urthecast-api-presentation

https://github.com/urthecast/urthecast-api-demos

https://github.com/urthecast/urthecast-map-tile-demos