Jarrett Keifer
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Is Zarr the New COG? Round 2!
We revisit the question: is Zarr the new COG? We review changes from the past year and discuss the shrinking gap between the two data formats.
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Is Zarr the New COG? Round 2!
We revisit the question: is Zarr the new COG? We review changes from the past year and discuss the shrinking gap between the two data formats.
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(Re)Making Cirrus: Three lessons learned
In part two of this blog series reflecting on our work with Cirrus, we discuss three core lessons that we uncovered.
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(Re)Making Cirrus: Reflections on five years spent building an open-source data orchestrator
This post is based on the author’s talk (Re)Making Cirrus: Five Years Building a Data Orchestration Framework, presented at FOSS4 NA 2025 and FOSS4G 2025. We’ve remade Cirrus at least three times. Maybe four, depending on how you count. Cirrus, a data orchestration framework we develop and use here at Element 84, recently celebrated its…
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Metadata makes the data format: metadata storage and representation across array formats
In this continuation of our recent raster data format blog series we discuss metadata: how do COG and Zarr represent metadata and how can geospatial coordinate metadata be represented across different formats? Where should metadata be stored? and more!
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Beyond the default: a modern guide to raster compression
We discuss community concerns surrounding raster compression and key metrics for evaluating compression effectiveness.
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Chunks and Chunkability: An Origin Story
If you accept that we are living through the Tyranny of the Chunk, then you might be wondering how we got to this place. Who created the first chunks and what was their motivation? As we explore the history of different data formats we’ll see recurring patterns of thinking around how much information to consolidate…
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Chunks and Chunkability: Tyranny of the Chunk
We discuss our attempt to understand chunks and chunking more deeply including where we are today and where we might go from here.
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Is Zarr the new COG?
Just to be upfront and get it out there: no. Despite what you may have heard, Zarr is not (yet) a replacement for the Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COG) format. Zarr is great for Level 3 and Level 4 n-dimensional data cubes. COG is great for Level 1, Level 2, and other non-data-cube rasters. Enthusiastic Zarr users…
