Optional Pre-Conference Session
Monday
April 12, 2027
1:30pm–3:00pm
The Future of Environmental Data: Leveraging Cloud-Native Stacks and Discrete Global Grid Systems
- No Charge to Participate – must pre-register
- Attendance is limited to 85 people.
Session Description:
Modern environmental research and management from modeling sea-level rise inundation to regional hydrological monitoring, rely on increasingly massive spatial datasets. Traditional desktop GIS workflows struggle to handle the download, storage, and processing of this volume of data. This session introduces two emerging geospatial technologies that solve these bottlenecks: Cloud-Native Geospatial workflows and Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS).
Participants will learn how cloud-optimized formats (e.g., GeoParquet, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFFs) and SpatioTemporal Asset Catalogs (STAC) allow for querying and analyzing terabytes of remote sensing and environmental data without local downloads. The session will then demonstrate how DGGS serves as a unifying spatial framework, standardizing the integration of disparate vector and continuous raster datasets for complex spatial modeling and enabling geospatial analysis at scale.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify the limitations of traditional spatial data processing in large-scale environmental monitoring.
- Access and query massive environmental datasets remotely using STAC and cloud-native formats.
- Conceptualize how DGGS functions as a multi-resolution spatial index to integrate complex ecological and hydrological data.
About the Instructor:
Levente Juhász is an Assistant Professor of Geospatial Analytics in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences at the University of Florida. He directs the Geospatial Analytics, Technology and Open Research (GATOR) Lab (https://gatorlab.io) at the Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center. His research focuses on evaluating spatial indexing efficiency within Discrete Global Grid Systems and developing cloud-native geospatial workflows for multi-scale spatial modeling and coastal resiliency decision support.