Planet Provides Open Source Mosaic of Queensland

Planet continues to deliver on its commitment to democratize access to satellite imagery. Last week, Planet and Queensland, Australia’s Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy (DNRME), published a high-resolution mosaic of the entire state for open distribution under a CC by SA-4.0 license.

Acquired by the Queensland government under its QSat initiative, the mosaic is 2.4 meter resolution and made from millions of daily images of the state captured between July and September 2017. This represents the highest resolution, most recent, and publicly available mosaic available in Queensland, and will enable new geospatial applications by the government, researchers, and developers.

“The Queensland government is a strong supporter of open data. It has also been an early adopter of Planet’s imagery services, which are used extensively and are available to all government agencies, an arrangement we have recently extended for a further two years,” said Steve Jacoby, Executive Director, DNRME. “It’s great to be able to provide the public and businesses broader access to the Queensland mosaic through a CC ShareAlike license.”

Jamie Leach, CEO of Open Data Institute of Australia (center); and Steve Jacoby, Executive Director, Queensland Department of Natural Resources, Mines and Energy (right) at the Connect event where the mosaic was announced.

“The Open Data Institute is passionate about the transformative potential of open data. We believe in the power of cross-sectoral collaboration, and we believe in challenging boundaries to create value such as this ground-breaking initiative between the Queensland government and Planet Labs,” said Leach.

The mosaic was announced at an event hosted by the Open Data Institute of Australia. The ODI Australia is an advocacy and training organization that ensures government and industry are equipped to rapidly innovate with open data, and will support efforts to leverage the mosaic for research on new uses cases of frequent satellite imagery.

Interested in getting access to the Queensland mosaic? Head over to the Queensland Globe or go to the Queensland spatial catalogue for the metadata.