spatial.IO - An integrated cloud-ready geospatial data management system

🎉 spatial.IO reaches Version 1.0!

After years of continuous development, we are excited to release spatial.IO v1.0 — marking its transition into a stable, production-ready platform. This milestone reflects the maturity of a system already powering multiple real-world applications at the UFZ, and we're thrilled to share it with the broader community.

Store, publish, analyze, and visualize raster, vector, and time-series geodata with a self-service interface that requires no database or GIS-server expertise.

What is spatial.IO?

spatial.IO is the Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ). It provides a complete, production-ready solution for managing geospatial data across its entire lifecycle — from ingestion and processing to publication, metadata management, and interactive visualization. Built entirely on open standards and open-source components, spatial.IO is designed for research institutions, government agencies, and any organization that needs to make spatial data FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

For Whom?

Features

• S3 cloud-storage
• FROST®-Server to store and access sensor data (in combination with time.IO and SaQC)
• Creation of custom interactive WebGIS components
• Extendable processes to get spatially aggregated values raster data
• Use of django framework to make configuration of data and WebGIS user-friendly
• Workflow for automated creation of OGC web services with GeoServer of new spatial data
• Workflow for automated creation of metadata entries in GeoNetwork

Supported formats: NetCDF, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF, GeoTIFF, Shapefile, GeoJSON, GeoPackage, CSV, and SensorThings (STA).

Quickstart

1. Install Docker Engine (Community Edition - CE is enough) and Docker Compose
2. Install a git client and checkout the spatial.IO repository or unzip the attached archive
3. Follow step-by-step instructions in README.md to startup

Techstack, dependencies and third party open source products

• FROST®-Server
• GeoServer
• GeoNetwork
• django
• PostgreSQL
• Vue
• Bulma
• pygeoapi
• OpenLayers

Part of an ecosystem: spatial.IO works seamlessly with time.IO (time-series management), SMS (sensor metadata management), and SaQC (data quality control) — together covering the full lifecycle of environmental monitoring data, all developed within the Helmholtz DataHub Initiative.

In production: spatial.IO already powers platforms like WIS-D (German water data) and the UFZ Forest Condition Monitor, plus numerous other Monitors at UFZ.

Acknowledgements