Editing GeoTIFF (section)

== Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF ==

"Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF" (COG) is a standard based on GeoTIFF, designed to make it straightforward to use GeoTIFFs hosted on [[HTTP]] webservers, so that users and software can make use of partial data within the file without having to download the entire file.<ref name=cogeo>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cogeo.org/|title=Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF|website=www.cogeo.org}}</ref><ref name=cogeospec>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/cogeotiff/cog-spec/blob/203241975d054e5c933493f65bc4810e93d0048a/spec.md|title=cog-spec|date=January 20, 2023|via=GitHub}}</ref> It is designed to work with HTTP range requests, and specifies a particular layout of data and metadata within the GeoTIFF, such that clients can predict which range of bytes they need to download. COG is simply a specialisation of GeoTIFF, so COG files are TIFF files.

The pattern of optimizing GeoTIFFs for HTTP range requests was first demonstrated at large scale when [[AWS]] started hosting [[Landsat]] data on [[Amazon S3]] in 2015.<ref>[https://dusk.geo.orst.edu/Pickup/Esri/AGU2015/IN43B-1727-AWS.pdf Sundwall, Jed. "Landsat on Amazon Web Services". American Geophysical Union, San Francisco, 2015.]</ref> The pattern was developed into the COG within the [[Open Source Geospatial Foundation]]/[[GDAL]] project, starting in around 2016.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/CloudOptimizedGeoTIFF|title=CloudOptimizedGeoTIFF – GDAL|website=trac.osgeo.org}}</ref> The COG format can be read and written by many common geographic software tools including [[GDAL]], [[QGIS]], and [[GeoTrellis]].<ref name=holmes2018>{{Cite web|url=https://medium.com/radiant-earth-insights/cloud-optimized-geotiff-advances-6b01750eb5ac|title=Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF Advances|first=Chris|last=Holmes|date=June 5, 2018}}</ref> Various providers now supply some of their data in COG format, including [[USGS]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.usgs.gov/landsat-missions/landsat-collection-2|title=Landsat Collection 2 &#124; U.S. Geological Survey|website=www.usgs.gov}}</ref> [[NASA]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/engage/cloud-optimized-geotiffs|title=NASA Datasets Available in Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs|first=NASA|last=Earth Science Data Systems|date=May 28, 2020|website=Earthdata}}</ref> [[Google]]<ref name=holmes2018 /> and [[DigitalGlobe]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blog.maxar.com/earth-intelligence/2018/cloud-optimized-geotiffs-and-the-path-to-accessible-satellite-imagery-analytics|title=Cloud optimized GeoTIFFs and the path to accessible satellite imagery…|website=Maxar Blog}}</ref>