Landsat 8 data is available for anyone to use via Amazon S3. All Landsat 8 scenes from 2015 are available along with a selection of cloud-free scenes from 2013 and 2014. All new Landsat 8 scenes are made available each day, often within hours of production. The satellite images the entire Earth every 16 days at a roughly 30 meter resolution.
Image from Landsat 8 satellite, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey
The Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) is a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that detects precipitation and atmospheric movement and disseminates data in approximately five minute intervals from each site. NEXRAD enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors.
Image from NEXRAD data
SpaceNet is a corpus of high-resolution satellite imagery and labeled training data for researchers to utilize to develop and train machine learning algorithms. The data set is made up of roughly 1,990 square kilometers of imagery at 50 cm resolution and 220,594 corresponding building footprints.
Image from SpaceNet program
The National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) acquires aerial imagery during the agricultural growing seasons in the continental U.S. Roughly one meter aerial imagery (Red, Green, Blue, NIR) is available for multiple years on Amazon S3.
Image from National Agriculture Imagery Program
Digital Elevation Models (DEM) provide a way to examine the elevation of the Earth’s surface and are available as terrain raster tiles on Amazon S3. Global coverage is provided and in the United States, 10 meter National Elevation Data (NED) data now augments the earlier NED 3 meter and 30 meter Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data for crisper, more consistent mountain detail.
Image of Digital Elevation Model data
The GDELT Project monitors the world's broadcast, print, and web news from nearly every corner of every country in over 100 languages and identifies the people, locations, organizations, counts, themes, sources, emotions, counts, quotes, images and events driving our global society every second of every day.
Image from GDELT Project
The NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) makes it easier and more efficient for researchers to access and process earth science data. NEX datasets available on Amazon S3 include downscaled climate projections, global MODIS vegetation indices, and Landsat Global Land Survey data.
Image from NASA
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, editable map of the world, created and maintained by volunteers and available for use under an open license, now on Amazon S3. Anyone can use OSM to provide maps, directions, and geographic context to users around the world, building on top of its several billion user-contributed features.
Image © OpenStreetMap contributors
The Sentinel-2 mission is a land monitoring constellation that provides high resolution optical imagery. The mission will provide a global coverage of the Earth's land surface every 10 days at resolutions up to 10 meters. Data are added regularly, usually within few hours after they are available on the Sentinel Scientific Hub.
Image from Sentinel-2
Pre and post event high-resolution satellite imagery in support of emergency planning, risk assessment, monitoring of staging areas and emergency response, damage assessment, and recovery. Also incudes crowdsourced damage assessments for major, sudden onset disasters.
Image from DigitalGlobe
Data from USGS' and NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) is available for anyone to use via Amazon S3. Select products are made available each day, often within hours of production.
Image from MODIS
A point-of-interest classification library and image sets to use as training data for machine learning algorithms, made available on Amazon S3 by IARPA. Released in two batches, the library includes 62 pre-defined categories, and contains 1,000,000 "image chips."
Image from FMotW
Data from NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) is available for anyone to use via Amazon S3. GOES provides continuous weather imagery and monitoring of meteorological and space environment data across North America.
Image from GOES-16
Archive data from the UK Met Office Global and Regional Ensemble Prediction System (MOGREPS) is now available on Amazon S3. Both a high resolution weather forecast covering the United Kingdom and a global weather forecast are available.
OpenAQ aggregates physical air quality data (PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, O3, and BC) from public data sources provided by government, research-grade and other sources. The project contains data from over 100 sources across more than 60 countries. Data is available via API, Amazon RDS Snapshots and on Amazon S3, ready to be queried in-place by tools like Amazon Athena.
Image from openaq.org
Below you will find both videos and articles explaining how Earth Observation data on AWS can be used in your startup, enterprise, or research institution.
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Videos
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Articles
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, editable map of the world containing billions of features, created and maintained by volunteers and available for use under an open license. This post explains how anyone can use Amazon Athena to quickly query publicly available OSM data stored in Amazon S3 as an AWS Public Dataset.
The American Community Survey Public Use Microdata Sample is available as an AWS Public Dataset. AWS and data.world collaborated to make the data available for analysis in the cloud. Now, anyone can access and analyze PUMS data in the cloud without needing to download and store their own copy. Data.world talks about the advantages of using a graph database for this data.
Mapzen gathered elevation data from various public sources and is making it easy for startups, enterprises, and research institutions to access and use via Amazon S3. These digital elevation models (DEMs) provide a powerful way to examine the elevation of the Earth’s surface. You can read a Q&A we conducted with Mapzen about this dataset.
A look at how Sinergise is using AWS to find innovative ways to process the already more than 200TB of data coming from Sentinel-2 satellite.
DigitalGlobe worked to find passionate participants who can leverage DigitalGlobe’s GBDX platform and imagery for geospatial projects supporting work in areas such as disaster response, food security, poverty elimination, and ending malaria.
An exploration of how the University of Oklahoma uses NEXRAD data on AWS to study migrating flocks of birds.
How DigitalGlobe uses Amazon SageMaker to handle machine learning at scale and provide on-demand access to its data.
More and more, research in the areas of climate change, agricultural resilience and space exploration rely on access to computing resources in the cloud. Because the cloud makes it easy to share massive amounts of data and allows them to only pay for the computing resources they need, they can accelerate their pace of research while reducing costs.
A look at how NOAA has opened up NEXRAD, a network of 160 high-resolution Doppler radar sites that enables severe storm prediction and is used by researchers and commercial enterprises to study and address the impact of weather across multiple sectors.
AWS Cloud Credits for Research are available for anyone to conduct research using Earth Observation data on AWS. Students, educators, and researchers are key drivers of technological innovation and we want to support new advances in the field.
AWS Marketplace has dozens of geospatial, GIS and location-based applications that can benefit your routing, planning, predictive modeling and mapping to deliver richer and more meaningful solutions. Easily launch intelligent location and mapping solutions into your AWS account and start understanding the world around you in a new way.
