Living Planet Symposium 2025: What a Week!
Over 6,500 participants gathered for this year’s Living Planet Symposium (LPS) — that’s more than double the number from the last edition! It’s a strong signal that Earth observation and space innovation are booming like never before.
The event brought together an incredible mix of researchers, industry leaders, and private sector pioneers from around the globe.
LPS 2025 Exhibitors
| ACRI-ST | Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem | EOX | Geodatalab |
| AI2Peat (CaDAR) | CS Group | Esri | Geoville |
| Airbus | Data Terra | EUSI | GMV |
| Beyond Gravity | DOMINO-E | Exprivia | Google Earth Engine |
| Brockmann Consult | EARSC | Flypix AI | Green Space Center |
| CEOS | Earthwave | Frontiers Media | HE Space |
| CGI | e-geos | GAF AG | IABG |
| CloudFerro S.A. | EODC | GeoBioRemediation | ICOS |
| IEEE GRSS | MEED Srl | PCP Wise | Swedish Space Corporation |
| Kayrros | MetaSensing | Planet | Teledyne Space Imaging |
| KSAT | MindEarth | Planetek Italia | Telespazio |
| Korea AeroSpace Administration | NASA | QFieldCloud | TerraDue |
| Kura Space | NV5 Geospatial | Recent Advances | Trade in Space |
| Leonardo | OHB | SatVu | VITO Remote Sensing |
| Magellium | OVHcloud | Serco | |
| MDA Space | PASCO Corporation | SITAEL |
LPS offered a unique opportunity to present the latest discoveries and projects, with hundreds of poster sessions. Our team member, Sebastian, had the honor of presenting his research during one of these sessions.
One of the standout moments was the premiere of the first-ever satellite image from ESA’s BIOMASS mission — a stunning view of the Bolivian rainforest captured using long-wavelength P-band radar. This historic image showcases the mission’s potential to reveal Earth’s forest structure like never before.
Didn’t get the chance to see all the posters? No worries — they’ll soon be available on the official LPS website, so you can revisit your favorites or catch the ones you missed!
A significant highlight was the opportunity to reconnect with the Geoawesome community during the ThriveGeo meetup. It was great to see both long-time blog’s fans and newcomers who share a common passion for shaping the geospatial future.
Event info: ThriveGeo Meetup
LPS enjoyed a huge amount of documentation in the form of posts on the LinkedIn platform (search by hashtag: #LPS2025). Big shoutout to our follower Daniela Jovic for spreading the enthusiasm and documenting the LPS energy so well!
View full post on LinkedIn
We would like to thank everyone for working together, for the ideas that were shared, and for thinking about the future of Earth observation.
If you have any personal impressions from the event and would like to feature them on the website, please let us know via email at sebastian@geoawesome.com.
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From Cloud Buckets to Maps: Modern Tools for Streaming and Visualizing Raster Data
Geospatial datasets are growing larger, and cloud-native storage is becoming the norm. This means that professionals working with raster data face a common challenge: how to efficiently access, organize, and visualize massive collections of satellite imagery, terrain models, and other raster formats that now live in Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Microsoft Azure.
The introduction of Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs) and the SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) standard has made it easier to store and organize this data. However, turning this data into useful insights is still challenging. Right now, there’s a lot of work being done to connect the information stored in the cloud with easy-to-use map-based tools. This is happening both in open-source projects and commercial platforms.
This article looks at the current state of raster infrastructure. It also explores some noteworthy tools, including Felt, Titiler, and others, that aim to streamline the workflow from cloud bucket to web map.
What Are Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs?
Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) is a special type of GeoTIFF file structured to allow efficient access over the internet. It uses internal tiling and overviews, enabling users to stream only the needed portions of large raster datasets without downloading the entire file—ideal for web mapping and cloud-based analysis.
STAC: The Standard Helping Structure Cloud Data
A key piece of the puzzle is the STAC standard, which structures metadata about geospatial assets in a machine-readable, spatially-aware catalog. STAC has become a widely adopted convention for organizing Earth observation data and underpins many modern data portals, including those run by NASA, USGS, and Radiant Earth.
By allowing datasets to be filtered by location, date, sensor, and more, STAC simplifies discovery. But STAC itself doesn’t handle visualization or streaming – it’s one part of a larger pipeline.
Case Study: Felt and COG Integration
This case study was inspired by Geoawesome’s meeting with Felt’s experts, which provided valuable insights into their platform and upcoming features. More details can be found here:
Overall, the integration process was straightforward and seamless.
Other Cloud-based Tools Platforms
To enable full raster workflows in the browser or desktop, several tools and platforms have emerged in recent years. Here are a few noteworthy ones:
- Felt
A more recent addition to this landscape, Felt focuses on turning cloud-stored COGs into interactive, styled map layers without writing code. It connects directly to S3, GCS, or Azure Blob and indexes files into a spatial catalog that supports metadata filtering, NDVI analysis, hillshading, and styling. While it abstracts infrastructure complexity, it is a commercial platform and may not offer the same flexibility as open-source tools.
Website: https://felt.com
- titiler (Ti-Tiler)
Titiler was created by Development Seed. It is a backend for serving raster tiles that is based on Python. It can be used directly from COGs. It supports STAC input, performs dynamic tiling, and exposes endpoints that can be used in Leaflet, MapLibre, or other clients. It’s powerful, but it requires some setup and server management.
GitHub: https://github.com/developmentseed/titiler
- OpenEO Platform
It is designed for analytical workflows and connects clients to large-scale Earth observation backends (like Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem, Google Earth Engine, or Sentinel Hub). While it’s not as focused on visualization, it’s great at processing raster data in the cloud using standard APIs.
Website: https://openeo.cloud/
- Radiant Earth STAC Browser
Designed for navigating STAC catalogs, Radiant Earth’s browser is minimal but effective. It doesn’t include visualization, but it helps users understand and query cloud-native datasets using the STAC standard.
Website: https://radiantearth.github.io/stac-browser/#/
Conclusion: An Evolving Landscape
We’re in the middle of a transformation in how geospatial raster data is accessed and visualized. Cloud-based tools are taking steps to abstract complexity and bring cloud-native data to life on the map. But the field is still evolving, and no one solution fits all use cases.
The geospatial community stands to benefit enormously from continued collaboration on open standards, shared libraries, and interoperable services. Whether you’re a developer, data scientist, or GIS analyst, now is the time to experiment, contribute, and help shape the future of cloud-native raster workflows.
Dear Reader, did you like this article? Which tool should we test next time? Write your ideas to one of our members: sebastian@geoawesome.com.
