About Us¶

Welcome to the Awesome GEE Community Catalog — a home for discovering and contributing geospatial datasets built for use with Google Earth Engine. It's an unfunded, open-source, grassroots project with a single mission: to collect community-sourced and community-generated geospatial data and make it accessible and analysis-ready, fostering collaboration and reducing the digital divide.

The catalog was created and is maintained by Dr. Samapriya Roy — still very much a one-person team. He is a Google Developer Expert for Google Earth Engine and the founder and CEO of Spatial Bytes, a geospatial and Geo AI consultancy, as well as a Research Scientist and Senior Geospatial Engineer at the Desert Research Institute and an advisor to NSF's NEON. Earlier in his career he was a Senior Product Manager at MAXAR and worked at Planet Labs. Dr. Roy holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Indiana University Bloomington and brings geospatial expertise as affiliate faculty at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a Designated Campus Colleague at the University of Arizona. A prolific open-source developer, he builds tools that make Earth observation data easier to find, access, and use — and champions open data and the idea of a geospatial commons that this catalog embodies.

The catalog is shaped by the community itself — through data requests, tutorial contributions, and the input, advice, and feedback of the #awesome community that uses it every day. It thrives on community participation and open-source principles, giving researchers, developers, and enthusiasts high-quality, analysis-ready data to build on. This year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) ACCESS program granted us 1.5 million Service Units (CPU core-hours) to continue this work through Jetstream2, an NSF project, which lets us preprocess datasets as requests come in.

Community Contributions¶

Our catalog is powered by the contributions of the GEE user base. Community members submit datasets, which are then reviewed, usually downloaded and preprocessed into Earth Engine–ready form, and finally added to the catalog for everyone to use. This collaborative approach keeps the collection diverse and rich — spanning topics from waterbodies and population distribution to drought monitoring and beyond. Every contribution expands the repository and makes it a stronger go-to resource for geospatial data. 🔍

Update Schedule¶

We know how much reliable, current data matters. Some datasets refresh on a fixed cadence; others follow a more ad hoc schedule, updated as requests come in or as new information about a dataset becomes available. This flexibility lets us respond to the community's needs while keeping the data relevant and accurate. 🗓️

We rely on the community to spread the word and share the catalog with others. Please cite and attribute the catalog using our citation — it makes the project more visible and helps it grow.

Want to help? Check out our Get Involved section.

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