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What is Source Cooperative?

Source Cooperative is a data publishing utility for the web that allows trusted organizations and individuals to publish data of any kind at any scale without needing to build or maintain their own infrastructure. Built on cloud object storage, Source provides a public catalog, standardized access, and community visibility for open scientific and geospatial data.

Why Source Cooperative?​

Built for Data Publishing, Not Just Storage: While cloud object storage services like Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, and Azure Blob Storage can store data, they don't make it discoverable or accessible to others. Source is a utility built on top of cloud object storage that provides a public catalog, standardized access, and community visibility that raw cloud storage can't offer.

Focus on Your Data, Not Infrastructure: Instead of building and maintaining data portals, custom APIs, and hosting infrastructure, Source lets you focus on creating high-quality data products that are easy to publish and easy to use.

No Lock-In: Source respects the Community Right to Replicate. Data providers are never locked into Source – you can always move your data elsewhere and host it independently if needed.

Cost-Effective at Scale: Source hosts over 1 petabyte of data across 300+ data products. Whether you're publishing a few gigabytes or hundreds of terabytes, Source provides cost-effective hosting without requiring you to manage cloud infrastructure.

Cloud-Native Access: Data on Source is stored in S3-compatible object storage, enabling efficient programmatic access through standard tools like the AWS CLI and various other programming libraries. Access data via the web interface.

Built for the Research Community: Source is developed and maintained by Radiant Earth, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. As a non-profit utility, Source aims to provide the best service to its members at the lowest possible cost, without seeking arbitrary profits or vendor lock-in.

Real-World Impact​

Organizations already using Source include:

  • Fika uses Source to enable AI-powered global water mapping, tripling the known coverage of mapped waterways worldwide
  • Earth Genome shares 60+ terabytes of processed satellite imagery and 3.5 billion vector embeddings through Source
  • Dynamical.org provides fast, easy access to weather data, serving 13,000 unique visitors and 31.3 million API requests
  • Auspatious publishes cloud-optimized geospatial datasets, making high-resolution data accessible without requiring large downloads

Current Status​

Source is currently in beta. While all data hosted in Source is available to the public, publishing data requires applying to be a beta tester. To apply, visit the beta tester application form.

Source currently:

  • Hosts over 5 petabytes of data
  • Serves approximately 700 terabytes of data transfer per month
  • Logs an average of 500 million data requests per month
  • Supports over 330 data products from 130+ organizations

Source is funded by Taylor Geospatial, with in-kind support from AWS and Azure for data hosting.