Creating the next generation of geospatial data tools for Python & the browser with GeoArrow, GeoParquet & GeoRust @developmentseed | he/him 🌈
New York, USA
Joined March 2010
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Introducing lonboard: the fastest way to visualize large geospatial vector data from Python.
Here's 3 million points rendered with a unique color and radius per point, in two seconds.
developmentseed.org/blog/202…
ds.io/lonboard
New blog post! kylebarron.dev/blog/fast-pyt…
This dives into performance pitfalls of Python bindings, why projects like Lonboard are so fast, and why I care about Apache Arrow so much. The post is high level and you don't need to know C/C++/Rust to understand it!
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
learning a new api? `mo.inspect()` your objects in @marimo_io. no more dir() / help()-ing around `<object at 0x...>`...
Published v0.4 of the Rust GeoParquet crate:
- Read all GeoParquet 1.1 files, including spatial filtering
- Easier integration with upstream parquet crate
- Support for adding bbox column when writing files
- Sync and async for both reading and writing
github.com/geoarrow/geoarrow…
Obstore v0.7 is out! The simplest Python cloud storage interface, powered by Rust
- Anonymous connections to GCS
- Obspec compatibility
- Improvements to NASA Earthdata credential provider
- Fixed creation of AzureStore from URL
- Improved documentation
developmentseed.org/obstore/…
Introducing Obspec: A Python protocol for interfacing with object storage.
Obspec is an alternative to fsspec to read, write, and modify data on object storage while acknowledging that object storage is *not* a filesystem.
developmentseed.org/obspec/l…
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
Another blog on my favorite topic: Parquet Filter Pushdown. datafusion.apache.org/blog/2…
Obstore v0.6 brings simple, painless integration with Microsoft Planetary Computer!
- *Automatic token refresh*. No need to manually fetch SAS tokens and never think about token expiration times again.
- STAC API integration
developmentseed.org/obstore/…
Published v0.1 of async-tiff, a Rust crate and Python library for low-level, async reading of TIFF and GeoTIFF files.
There's high potential for improved performance when opening many TIFF files concurrently, esp in Python server environments
github.com/developmentseed/a…
Published obstore 0.5, the fastest Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure.
- Benchmarks: **2.8x higher throughput** than aioboto3 for many small, concurrent requests
- Custom credential providers, automatic token refresh
- Improved docs, fsspec integration
developmentseed.org/obstore/…
New release of obstore: the simplest, highest-throughput Python interface to S3, GCS & Azure Storage!
- Pickle support, to unblock usage in @dask_dev
- Easier one-line store creation
- Open remote objects as file-like readers or writers
- Improved docs
developmentseed.org/obstore/…
Really cool to see @petegadomski 's work integrating Rust-Python for the STAC ecosystem youtube.com/watch?v=FdCJPmx2…
New obstore v0.3 for easy access to S3, GCS, and Azure Storage!
- Easy async **streaming** downloads, uploads, and copies across object stores
- Streaming list, with no pagination
- Easier configuration with improved type hints
- Fsspec integration
developmentseed.org/obstore/…
Really happy for myself and @developmentseed to be part of GeoJupyter, an initiative to improve interactive mapping and analysis in @ProjectJupyter notebooks.
geojupyter.org/blog/20250108…
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
Such a fantastic explanation of my code — not sure I'd explain it better. Check this out! 🙏
Spatial indexes, and RTrees specifically, are at the core of geospatial software.
But ever wondered how an RTree is actually implemented?
In this post we’ll dive into the implementation of Flatbush, a blazing-fast, memory-efficient RTree by @mourner
kylebarron.dev/literate-flat…
Spatial indexes, and RTrees specifically, are at the core of geospatial software.
But ever wondered how an RTree is actually implemented?
In this post we’ll dive into the implementation of Flatbush, a blazing-fast, memory-efficient RTree by @mourner
kylebarron.dev/literate-flat…
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
Pyodide 0.27 has been released 🎉
Release highlights:
🔓 pyodide-build decoupling
🔢 @numpy_team 2.0
🏎️ Python ⇔ JavaScript FFI performance improvements
📊 New data science and data engineering packages: @ApacheArrow (PyArrow), @DataPolars, @duckdb
blog.pyodide.org/posts/0.27-…
Released geo-index 0.2: Fast, memory-efficient, zero-copy spatial indexes for Python & Rust.
- Range, nearest-neighbor queries
- Persist indexes as bytes, reuse them later
- Supports float32 for 2x less memory
- Enables GeoParquet spatial partitioning
github.com/kylebarron/geo-in…
These are ports of @mourner 's awesome Flatbush and Kdbush libraries 🙇♂️
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
The browser based parquet viewer parquet-viewer.xiangpeng.sys… is pretty sweet -- let's you explore the file format, including schema and layout, and data with SQL. Natch it is based on @ApacheDataFusio
Kyle Barron kylebarron.dev on bsky retweeted
Buckle up because we're crashing into the new year with my annual database retrospective: License change blowbacks! @databricks vs. @SnowflakeDB gangwar! @DuckDB shotgun weddings! Buying a college quarterback with database money for your new lover! cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2025/…
