ISTAC (AIRC Catalogs)
Immutable, versioned STAC catalogs with GeoParquet item mirrors for bbox/time queries.
AIRC Open Data Hub
This page is the entry point for AIRC’s Open Data Program. Browse published catalogs, query GeoParquet directly with DuckDB, and access official documentation for the standards and tools we use.
ISTAC Browser
Visual browsing of the catalog (we’ll enable this after deployment).
Open browser (coming soon)What you can do
Use a bounding box + time window to discover items, then load assets directly (COGs, GeoTIFFs, etc.) in your tools.
See query example →Datasets
AIRC will expand this list over time. We’re starting with one working ISTAC collection and adding more.
Sentinel-2 L2A (ISTAC snapshot)
STAC items mirrored to GeoParquet for fast bbox/time filtering with DuckDB.
Overture Maps (Vector GeoParquet)
Global open vector themes (including buildings) distributed as GeoParquet and queryable with DuckDB.
Query (DuckDB)
Example: query a published GeoParquet “item mirror” directly over HTTP using a bounding box and datetime window.
Python snippet
import duckdb
con = duckdb.connect()
con.execute("INSTALL spatial;")
con.execute("LOAD spatial;")
url = "https://airesearchcorps.org/OpenData/istac/v/2026-02-27_1200/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/geoparquet/items.parquet"
df = con.execute("""
SELECT id, datetime
FROM read_parquet(url)
WHERE datetime >= TIMESTAMP '2026-02-13'
AND datetime < TIMESTAMP '2026-02-27'
AND ST_Intersects(
geometry,
ST_MakeEnvelope(-117.30, 32.60, -117.00, 32.95)
)
LIMIT 50
""").df()
print(df.head())Entry points
Resources
Official documentation and references for standards, formats, and tools used by the Open Data Program.