Lat × Long is a weblog exploring and documenting geospatial technology, data and standards on the Web.
Zarrista is a new Python library for working with Zarr data. Implemented in Rust, it delivers significant performance improvements over Zarr-Python, the go-to library for handling Zarr data in Python. Work is currently ongoing to integrate Zarrista into Zarr-Python to bring those benefits to the wider Python community. to avoid fracturing the ecosystem, we plan to integrate Zarrista as a native…
I recently covered the Geoviz library , a thematic-mapping JavaScript library based on D3. For those who prefer to do their data visualisation in R, there’s Geovizr , so you can make maps in R. geovizr is an R package for thematic mapping. It’s an R wrapper around the geoviz JavaScript library, itself based on the d3.js ecosystem. Like the original JavaScript library, the package can…
Raphael Hagen and Shane Loeffler outline a complete guide to visualising NetCDF data on a web map without precompiling tile sets. Their approach uses VirtualiZarr to create virtual Zarr references stored in Icechunk ; icechunk-js , a JavaScript library to read Icechunk data; and zarr-layer , which renders Zarr data on MapboxGL or MapLibreGL maps. Many small, single-purpose open-source libraries…
With a new approach to transforming geometries, ohsome-planet now transforms OpenStreetMap data from PBF to GeoParquet faster and without relation-size constraints. This release presents a complete rework of our approach to assemble geometries for complex mutlipolygon [sic] relations. Our new approach tackles two challenges at the same time. First, processing performance was a bottleneck for…
In rather unsurprising news, Google has added new AI-driven functionality to Google Maps; this time, it’s an agentic assistant for Ask Maps, allowing users to order food or find and book hotels. Aisha Malik, Techcrunch : With the new agentic food-ordering capabilities, users can open Ask Maps in Google Maps and ask a question like, “Where can I order vegan avocado toast and an oat milk latte near…
Curated by Will Cadell: A curated, tracked list of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers for geospatial, GIS, mapping, and earth-observation work — geocoding, routing, PostGIS, STAC/imagery, QGIS/ArcGIS, weather, and the commercial location platforms. The list currently includes 55 MCP servers and a Claude skill, which recommends appropriate servers and can add new ones. Update (12 Aug 2026): The…
140 session recordings from this year’s FOSS4G Europe are available on Youtube and OSGeo’s PeerTube .
STAC makes it possible to find geospatial data if you already know what data exists and where to source it from. It’s like the search function on a website. What we’re missing is a search engine that supports pure discovery, finding not just data but also the data sources. MAAP’s STAC Collection discovery aims to fill this gap. A thin API layer sits between STAC catalogues and a search client.…
Enough has been said about the botched rollout and subsequent reversal of a generative-AI feature in Google Earth. I’m wondering why this keeps happening: rushed AI rollouts with no one questioning whether they are a good idea in the first place. Ed Parsons : We are living through a corporate panic. In boardrooms across Silicon Valley, leadership is terrorized by the prospect of being left behind…
Last week’s major MapLibre GL JS release, which contains a whopping sixteen breaking changes and removes the last remaining references to Mapbox, marking the full emancipation from the library’s origins . Other key highlights include: Switch to an ESM-only distribution ( maplibre-gl.mjs ). The UMD bundles ( maplibre-gl.js , maplibre-gl-csp.js ) are no longer published. […] Consumers…