Development Seed

The SatSummit St. Louis agenda is taking shape. But there are still some important voices missing: yours. Our Call for Speakers is open through September 5, and we’re looking for people with something useful, challenging, or timely to bring to the conversation. That could be a technical deep dive. A project that taught you something unexpected. A hard problem your organization is still working through. A perspective on where Earth observation is headed. Or a panel that puts different parts of the community in conversation with one another. SatSummit brings together people building satellite and Earth observation capabilities with those putting them to work across climate, humanitarian response, global development, government, research, and industry. We want the program to reflect the questions this community is actually grappling with. What we don’t want: sales pitches or pay-to-play presentations. SatSummit’s program is independently curated, and sponsorship does not guarantee a place on stage. Have an idea we should hear? Submit by September 5: https://lnkd.in/gmAufn6M SatSummit St. Louis November 18–19, 2026

Behind the Tech: Meet Gjore Milevski, Software Engineer at Development Seed Gjore brings curiosity, initiative, and a deep commitment to building tools that help people understand and respond to our changing planet. As part of our work with NASA on VEDA (Visualization, Exploration, and Data Analysis), he’s helping develop systems that support climate resilience and disaster response, including for communities affected by wildfires. His recent contributions include the Mobile Climate Mapper, an interactive tool featured at the Smithsonian’s Earth Information Center that helps people explore how extreme temperatures may shift over time around the globe. Before joining Development Seed, Gjore worked across Europe — including at a Technical University of Munich spin‐off — where he built real‐time interfaces for wearable laser scanning and mobile mapping devices. He’s passionate about GIS, real‐time visualizations, event streaming, and creating interactive data systems for the web. Originally from Skopje, Macedonia and now based in Switzerland, Gjore values clear communication, collaborative problem‐solving, and helping teams move forward when things feel uncertain. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, exploring nearby forests, reading history and nonfiction, and once completed a 100km walk from Munich to Mittenwald in 24 hours. We’re grateful for Gjore’s thoughtful approach to engineering and the impact he brings to every project. https://lnkd.in/gXT_wjuC

💡 Not every geospatial project needs a planetary-scale database. We’ve helped power platforms like NASA’s VEDA with STAC-based systems indexing hundreds of millions of assets. But what if your catalog is smaller? Should you still have to spin up costly managed databases and complex backends just to search your metadata? We think there’s a better way. With 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗰-𝗴𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘁, we’re exploring a lightweight, cost-effective solution for storing and querying STAC metadata, without the overhead. Query directly where the data lives using open formats like GeoParquet and modern tools like DuckDB. No server required. Check out the benchmarks and see how we’re simplifying cloud-native geospatial search for leaner workflows: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gsGyCrnj Cloud-Native Geospatial Forum (CNG) Pete Gadomski Zac Deziel STACspec

Development Seed is all over the map this August, sharing open‐source tools, cloud‐native geospatial workflows, and applied AI across five countries and seven major events. If you’ll be at any of these, we’d love to connect. https://lnkd.in/ezeJkenr 📍 IGARSS 2026 — Washington, DC (Aug. 9-14) Kevin Bullock TU2.R6: Bridging Earth Observations & Risk Analytics at Scale 📍 ACCESS Community Workshop — Melbourne, Australia (Aug. 19-21) @Wei Ji Leong CuPy‐Xarray: towards direct‐to‐GPU decoding of raster file formats 📍 Responsible Gen‐AI Hackweek — Seattle, WA (Aug. 24-28) Lilly Thomas & Wei Ji Leong Workshop TBD 📍 STAC Japan 2026 — Ibaraki, Japan (Aug. 25-27) Pete Gadomski 📍 State of the Map Global — Paris, France (Aug. 28-30) Vitor George OSM for Cities: Breaking the data waste cycle 📍 FOSS4G — Hiroshima, Japan (Aug 30–Sept. 5) - Pete Gadomski — The modern STAC software ecosystem - Pete Gadomski & Anthony Lukach — Building a Production STAC API with eoAPI (workshop) - Firza Riany — Accelerating Climate Action: GIS Dashboards with openEO & titiler - Anthony Lukach — Multistore: An S3‐compliant data distribution API - Kyle Barron — Browser‐based raster reprojection with GPU acceleration - Kyle Barron — Fast, interactive raster visualization in Python & the browser with deck.gl‐raster - Sajjad Anwar — Open Standards and Tools to Accelerate Global Crisis Response - Sajjad Anwar — The Great Retooling August is a big month for open geospatial, and we’re excited to share what we’ve been building and to learn from the global community pushing Earth observation forward.

Zarrista: a new, faster Python library for working with Zarr data, built with Rust! Measured at 1.9x to 2.7x faster than Zarr-Python. We plan to integrate it in Zarr-Python as an opt-in backend. https://lnkd.in/emqBTFPV - High-performance Rust core built on Zarrs - Sync/Async support - Zero copy data exchange between Rust and Python - Numpy, Obstore and Icechunk integration - Broad Zarr data type support - Full type hinting

As response efforts continue following the powerful earthquake that struck western Colombia near San José del Palmar in Chocó, Vantor has activated its Open Data Program to provide frontline organizations, humanitarian responders, and the open-source mapping community with free access to high-resolution satellite imagery. Access the imagery: Open Data (S3): s3://vantor-opendata You can also explore the imagery through our partners: 👉 Development Seed STAC Map: https://lnkd.in/eWkQuurU 👉 Esri Disaster Imagery Explorer: https://lnkd.in/eisC2RFD 👉 moreGeo GmbH STAC Browser: https://lnkd.in/eGsHfaNT Our latest imagery provides visibility into earthquake-affected areas and can support damage assessment, identification of impacted infrastructure, and response planning. We’ll continue uploading new imagery as it becomes available in the coming days. All imagery is provided under a non-commercial Creative Commons 4.0 license (CC BY-NC 4.0). We hope this imagery helps responders understand the extent of the damage, prioritize impacted communities, and accelerate relief and recovery efforts.

What if exploring large raster datasets didn’t require a server? In Groundwork 05, we highlight new advances in deck.gl‐raster that make cloud‐native rasters truly browser‐first. Recent updates include: • Multi‐band COG support • Improved GPU‐accelerated processing • Smarter tile loading • Early groundwork for GeoZarr • As browsers become more capable, they’re becoming powerful platforms for interacting with Earth observation data directly. • See the latest deck.gl‐raster work in Groundwork 05 → https://lnkd.in/gR-9nuBE