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GeoHub as a data store

Importance of centralized database

Geospatial datasets tend to be playing a critical role on policy making, and we are putting a lot of efforts on maintain them at each department and country office.

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However, these datasets have not been shared and reused effectively accross organizations.

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Establishing GeoHub as a centralized database to manage all geospatial datasets into a location is one of the important purposes in UNDP.

How does GeoHub manage datasets?

GeoHub uses Azure - a cloud platform powered by Microsoft to manage geospatial datasets.

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Your datasets will be uploaded into UNDP's Azure blob storage account through our data pipeline, and then the metadata will be registered into geopatial database (PostgreSQL/PostGIS).

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The following diagram shows a sample workflow to upload and publish a dataset. Your data will be ingested to cloud optimized formats and stored in Azure securely.

sequenceDiagram actor u as User box transparent Azure participant g as GeoHub participant queue as ServiceBus queue participant pipeline as Pipeline participant blob as BlobStorage participant db as PostGIS end u->>g: Upload a dataset g->>queue: Put a task into a queue queue->>pipeline: launch pipeline on demand pipeline->>queue: Fetch a task from queue pipeline->>pipeline: Ingest a dataset pipeline->>blob: Upload a dataset pipeline-->>g: notify completion via websocket u->>+g: publish dataset g->>db: register metadata to database to publish g->>-u: publish done

if you are interested in seeing our database structure, please go to here.

In terms of the data pipeline, source code is managed at geohub-data-pipeline repository.

Datasets page at GeoHub

The datasets managed in GeoHub can be explored at datasets page (/data).

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Datasets page after signing in
Figure 1: Datasets page after signing in

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As of 21 March 2024,

  • 4401 public datasets are currently managed at GeoHub.
  • 4167 are global datasets,
  • and 101 datasets are specifically related to countries.
  • 4339 datasets are connected to SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

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GeoHub also manages some of satellite imagery for earth observation from the third party providers.

Currently 16 satellite imagery collections (STAC (Spatio Temporal Asset Catalog)) are available in GeoHub.

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The more GIS data uploaded, the more useful it becomes as a data store and analysis tool for decision making and all UN staff's works. Any user can upload data and enrich the GeoHub database.

Next step

From next section, we will show you how to upload and share your own datasets at GeoHub.