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STAC

SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) is a common way to describe geospatial assets such as satellite scenes, DEMs and Cloud Optimised GeoTIFFs so software can discover them by place and time.

A STAC catalogue typically contains:

  • collections
  • items with geometry/bounding box and time
  • assets such as COG URLs
  • links between records
  • extension metadata such as projection or raster information

Why it is useful​

Instead of manually browsing a portal for every date, a script can ask a STAC API/catalogue for items intersecting a study area and time range, then read the selected cloud assets directly.

OpenTopography​

OpenTopography publishes a STAC catalogue for its raster DEM holdings. See OpenTopography API and STAC.

STAC is a catalogue, not a quality guarantee​

The collection metadata still determines resolution, source, vertical datum, licence and processing history. A STAC item being discoverable does not make two raster collections directly comparable.

For raster delivery concepts see Imagery services and formats.

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026

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