GBDXTools: Python tools for using GBDX¶
GBDXTools is a package to simplify interaction with Maxars’s GBDX platform and integrate GBDX data into Python’s mature analysis ecosystem.
GBDX Platform¶
GBDX is Maxar’s online platform to access imagery, search data, and run analysis. Its functionality can be broken into four areas:
Raster Data Access
Access to 100+ PB of Maxar satellite imagery plus Landsat, Sentinel, and other sources.
Image Catalog
Search and filter image metadata to find imagery.
Vector Services
Search and store vector data. Includes image footprints, OpenStreetMap, NaturalEarth, and other datasets.
GBDX Workflows
Build analysis workflows using a library of tasks and run them at scale.
Python GBDXTools¶
GBDXTools extends the access to these services with additional functionality for analysis and visualization. It can be thought of as having three layers:
Current version is 0.17.1
- A core API library to abstract GBDX services
- Image classes that wrap all of the API calls, manage the geospatial metadata, and return NumPy arrays. These classes are based on Dask arrays which defer the server calls until the image data is needed.
- Simple visualization and analysis methods such as one-line plotting with Matplotlib (not included).
CLI RdaTools¶
Some GBDX functionality is also available through the command line with https://github.com/DigitalGlobe/rdatools. The CLI tool is useful for building simple workflows with other command lines tools like gdal_translate or JQ. RdaTools is a statically linked Go executable and binaries should run on most systems.
Example¶
To load a subset of an image covering the Denver area using its catalog identifier, and view it in a Jupyter notebook:
from gbdxtools import CatalogImage
image = CatalogImage('103001007B9DD400', bbox=[-105.06, 39.67, -105.04, 39.68])
image.plot()

GBDXTools is MIT licenced.
GBDXTools can be installed with pip:
pip install gbdxtools
- GBDXTools github repository: https://github.com/DigitalGlobe/gbdxtools
- For general information on the GBDX platform and API visit http://gbdxdocs.digitalglobe.com.
- For a varied collection of gbdxtools examples see http://github.com/platformstories/notebooks.