Planet Platform Beta & Open California: Our Data, Your Creativity

At Planet Labs, we believe that broad coverage frequent imagery of the Earth can be a significant tool to address some of the world’s challenges. But this can only happen if we democratise access to it. Put another way, we have to make data easy to access, use, and buy. That’s why I recently announced at the United Nations that Planet Labs will provide imagery in support of projects to advance the Sustainable Development Goals.

Today I am proud to announce that we’re releasing a beta version of the Planet Platform, along with our imagery of the state of California under an open license.

The Planet Platform Beta will enable a pioneering cohort of developers, image analysts, researchers, and humanitarian organizations to get access to our data, web-based tools and APIs. The goal is to provide a “sandbox” for people to start developing and testing their apps on a stack of openly available imagery, with the goal of jump-starting a developer community; and collecting data feedback on Planet’s data, tools, and platform.

Our Open California release includes two years of archival imagery of the whole state of California from our RapidEye satellites and 2 months of data from the Dove satellite archive; and will include new data collected from both constellations on an ongoing basis, with a two-week delay. The data will be under an open license, specifically CC BY-SA 4.0. The spirit of the license is to encourage R&D and experimentation in an “open data” context. Practically, this means you can do anything you want, but you must “open” your work, just as we are opening ours. It will enable the community to discuss their experiments and applications openly, and thus, we hope, establish the early foundation of a new geospatial ecosystem.

This initial release will inform how we deliver our data set to a global community of customers.

Explore and analyze California imagery using our web tools (pictured) or leverage our API

When my co-founders and I started Planet, one of our key objectives was (and still is) to make changes on our planet more visible and actionable. With the Planet Platform beta and Open California, we’re excited to tap into the ideas and talent of many, versus the few—to discover unique use-cases for frequent, global satellite imagery, and to work towards a more transparent planet together, as a community.

With years of California data at your fingertips, what will you build? Join our community.