This content lists free remote sensing hubs for downloading satellite images and other geospatial information.

1. Center for Research and Application for Satellite Remote Sensing
Yamaguchi University
Free and Open Source Software
for Remote Sensing and GIS

2. • Free software means the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and
improve the software.
• Open source software is defined as software that has the source code freely available and is
licensed so that it can be freely distributed and modified as long as appropriate credit is
provided to the developers. There are several licensing options for open source software but all
of them follow these basic rules. More information about open source software is available at
the Open Source Initiative web page (http://www.opensource.org/).
• Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that can be classified as both free
software and open-source software. That is, anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and
change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are
encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software. This is in contrast to proprietary
software, where the software is under restrictive copyright and the source code is usually
hidden from the users.
Open source and free software

3. GIS and Remote sensing free software
• QGIS
• GRASS
• SAGA
• Orfeo Toolbox
• MultiSpec
• gvSIG
• Sentinel toolbox
• GDAL
QGIS
GRASS
Orfeo
SAGA
gvSIG
Multispec
GDAL
SNAP
Contents

4. SAR remote sensing free software
• NEST (ESA)
• Sentinel 1A (SNAP)
• DORIS
• PolSARPro
• GMTSAR
• ROI_PAC
• Let’s SAR
ROI
PAC
SNAP
PolSARPro
NEST
GMTSAR
DORIS
Let's SAR
Contents

5. • QGIS is a professional GIS application that is built on top of and proud to be itself
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).
• QGIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS)
licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the
Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It supports numerous vector,
raster, and database formats and functionalities.
• OS: runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android
• Features: View data, Explore data and compose maps, Create, edit, manage and
export data, Analyze data, Publish maps on the Internet, Extend QGIS
functionality through plugins, Core Plugins, External Python Plugins, Python
Console
• Information: http://www.qgis.org/en/site/
QGIS

6. The QGIS GUI is divided
into five components:
1. Menu Bar
2. Toolbars
3. Panels
4. Map View
5. Status Bar
QGIS user guide: http://docs.qgis.org/2.18/en/docs/user_manual/index.html
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2
4
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2
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QGIS (2)

7. QGIS can work with other
toolboxes:
• GRASS GIS (see 2)
• Orfeo toolbox (see 4)
• SAGA (see 3)
QGIS (3)

8. • GRASS GIS, commonly referred to as GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis
Support System), is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS)
software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image
processing, graphics and maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization.
GRASS GIS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the
world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting
companies. It is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial
Foundation (OSGeo).
• OS: Linux, Mac OSX, Windows
• Features: Raster analysis, 3D-Raster (voxel) analysis, Vector analysis, Point data
analysis, Image processing, DTM-Analysis, Geocoding, Visualization, Map
creation, SQL-support, Geostatistics, Temporal framework and furthermore.
• Information: https://grass.osgeo.org/
GRASS

9. 1) Start-up interface
2) Layer manager by GUI and
command prompt
3) Map display
4) LXTerminal
2 3
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4
GRASS (2)

10. • SAGA is the abbreviation for System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses
• SAGA is a Geographic Information System (GIS) software
• SAGA has been designed for an easy and effective implementation of spatial
algorithms
• SAGA offers a comprehensive, growing set of geoscientific methods
• SAGA provides an easily approachable user interface with many visualization
options
• SAGA runs under Windows and Linux operating systems
• SAGA is a Free Open Source Software (FOSS)
• Features: Data import and export, vector analysis tool, raster analysis tools,
terrain analysis, projection tools, image analysis, geostatistic tools.
• Information: http://www.saga-gis.org/en/index.html
SAGA

11. http://www.saga-gis.org/_images/software/gui.png
Current user interface
SAGA (2)

12. • Orfeo ToolBox (OTB) is an open-source project for state-of-the-art remote sensing. Built
on the shoulders of the open-source geospatial community,
• ORFEO Toolbox Library (OTB) is a high-performance image processing library. It is
primarily used for processing large remote sensing images such as those gathered by
radars, satellites and aerial photography. OTB provides tools for optic and radar images
(tridimensional aspects, segmentation, classification, changes detection, texture
analysis, pattern matching, and optic/radar complementarities), many of which can be
run on limited-resourced laptops.
• Features: it can process high resolution optical, multispectral and radar images at the
terabyte scale. A wide variety of applications are available: calibration, feature
extraction, geometry (ortho-rectification, pan-sharpening), image filtering, image
manipulation, miscellaneous, segmentation, stereo and all the way to classification and
SAR processing
• OS: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• Information: https://www.orfeo-toolbox.org/
• https://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/otb_overview.html
Orfeo Toolbox

13. Orfeo Toolbox (2)

14. • MultiSpec (© Purdue Research Foundation) is a processing system for
interactively analyzing Earth observational multispectral image data such
as that produced by the Landsat series of Earth satellites and
hyperspectral image data from current and future airborne and
spaceborne systems such as AVIRIS.
• Features: Import data, display multispectral images, histogram, reformat,
create new channels, cluster, define classes, determine the best spectral
features, classify, list classification results, correlation matrix, utility
functions
• Information: https://engineering.purdue.edu/~biehl/MultiSpec/
Multispec

15. Multispec (2)

16. • gvSIG is a geographic information system (GIS), that is, a desktop
application designed for capturing, storing, handling, analyzing and
deploying any kind of referenced geographic information in order to solve
complex management and planning problems. gvSIG is known for having a
user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common formats,
both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working
with geographic-like information (query tools, layout creation,
geoprocessing, networks, etc.).
• Features: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• Information: http://www.gvsig.com/en
gvSIG

17. gvSIG (2)

18. • GDAL is a translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats
that is released under an X/MIT style Open Source license by the Open
Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single raster
abstract data model and single vector abstract data model to the calling
application for all supported formats. It also comes with a variety of useful
command line utilities for data translation and processing.
• Information: http://www.gdal.org/
GDAL Geospatial Data Abstraction Library

19. • ESA is developing free open source toolboxes for the scientific
exploitation of the Sentinel missions.
• Information: https://sentinel.esa.int/web/sentinel/toolboxes
• Sentinel-1 Toolbox (S1TBX)
The Sentinel-1 Toolbox (S1TBX) consists of a collection of processing
tools, data product readers and writers and a display and analysis
application to support the large archive of data from ESA SAR missions
including Sentinel-1, ERS-1 & 2 and Envisat, as well as third party SAR
data from ALOS PALSAR, TerraSAR-X, COSMO-SkyMed and RADARSAT-2.
SeNtinel’s Application Platform (SNAP)

20. • Sentinel-2 Toolbox (S2TBX)
The Sentinel-2 Toolbox consists of a rich set of visualisation, analysis and processing tools for the
exploitation of MSI data from the upcoming Sentinel-2 mission. As a multi-mission remote
sensing toolbox, S2TBX supports the ESA missions Envisat (MERIS & AATSR), ERS (ATSR), as well
as third party data from RapidEye, SPOT, MODIS (Aqua and Terra), Landsat (TM), ALOS (AVNIR &
PRISM) and others. The various tools can be run from an intuitive desktop application or via a
command-line interface.
• Sentinel-3 Toolbox (S3TBX)
The Sentinel-3 Toolbox consists of a rich set of visualisation, analysis and processing tools for the
exploitation of OLCI and SLSTR data from the upcoming Sentinel-3 mission. As a multi-mission
remote sensing toolbox, S3TBX supports the ESA missions Envisat (MERIS & AATSR), ERS (ATSR),
SMOS as well as third party data from MODIS (Aqua and Terra), Landsat (TM), ALOS (AVNIR &
PRISM) and others.
• Other software: Sentinel Atmospheric Toolbox, Sentinel Altimetry toolbox and other tools
SeNtinel’s Application Platform (SNAP) (2)

21. • A common architecture for all Sentinel Toolboxes is being jointly
developed by Brockmann Consult, Array Systems Computing and C-S
called the Sentinel Application Platform (SNAP).
SeNtinel’s Application Platform (SNAP) (3)

22. • The Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) is an ESA open source toolbox under the
GNU GPL licence for reading, processing, analysing and visualising ESA
(ERS-1/2, ENVISAT, SENTINEL-1) and other spaceborne* (TerraSAR-X,
RADARSAT 1-2, COSMO-SkyMed, JERS-1, ALOS PALSAR) SAR data
processed to Level-1 or higher.
• OS: NEST is programmed in Java™ to allow a maximum portability. The
NEST software has been successfully tested under MS Windows™ XP®,
Vista and 7 as well as under Linux, Solaris® and Mac OS X operating
systems.
• Information: https://earth.esa.int/web/nest/home/
NEST (ESA)

23. • The Delft Institute of Earth Observation and Space Systems of Delft University of
Technology has developed an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) processor
named Doris (Delft object-oriented radarinterferometric software). The Doris software can be
downloaded freely from this site for non-commercial applications (conditions).
• Interferometric products and endproducts such as Digital Elevation Models and displacement
maps can be generated with this software from Single Look Complex data. Data from the
satellites ERS, ENVISAT (first ENVISAT interferogram, 54kB, DEM, 107kB, and perspective view,
177kB), JERS (first JERS interferogram), and RADARSAT (first RADARSAT interferogram) can be
processed with the Doris software.
• OS: It is running on X86 linux machines and MS-windows, SUN, SGI, HP.
• Features: Processing upto complex interferogram and coherence map has been implemented.
Unwrapping has to be performed with external software. Module for geocoding of the
unwrapped phase values is provided.
• Information: http://doris.tudelft.nl/
DORIS

24. The Polarimetric SAR Data Processing and Educational Tool aims to facilitate
the accessibility and exploitation of multi-polarised SAR datasets including
those from ESA (Envisat ASAR Alternating Polarisation mode products and
Sentinel-1) and Third Party Missions (ALOS-1 PALSAR, ALOS-2 PALSAR,
COSMO-SkyMed, RADARSAT-2, RISAT, TerraSAR-X and Tandem-X).
OS: Windows (x86 architecture only, Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP) Linux and
Unix-Solaris (x86 architecture only and Tcl-Tk version) Mac OS (Parallels
Desktop 4.0 technology)
Information: https://earth.esa.int/web/polsarpro/home
PolSARpro

25. GMTSAR is an open source (GNU General Public License) InSAR processing system
designed for users familiar with Generic Mapping Tools (GMT). The code is written
in C and will compile on any computer where GMT and NETCDF are installed. The
system has three main components:
1. a preprocessor for each satellite data type (ERS-1/2, Envisat, ALOS-1, TerraSAR-X,
COSMOS-SkyMed, Radarsat-2, Sentinel-1A/B, and ALOS-2) to convert the native format
and orbital information into a generic format;
2. an InSAR processor to focus and align stacks of images, map topography into phase, and
form the complex interferogram;
3. a postprocessor, mostly based on GMT, to filter the interferogram and construct
interferometric products of phase, coherence, phase gradient, and line-of sight
displacement in both radar and geographic coordinates
Information:
http://topex.ucsd.edu/gmtsar/
http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/projects/gmt5sar/wiki
GMTSAR

26. • ROI_PAC (Repeat Orbit Interferometry PACkage) is a powerful open source
software package for processing diverse satellite interferometric synthetic
aperture radar (InSAR) data, and has been used in numerous geophysical
applications around the world
• OS: Linux
• Information:
http://www.geo.cornell.edu/eas/PeoplePlaces/Faculty/matt/roi_pac.html
/
ROI_PAC

27. • Let's SAR is a simple tool package to use SAR data such as ALOS PALSAR
mosaics for forest classification, change detection, and other major
applications. The aim of the tool is providing the first step in the use of
SAR to more people and expanding the utilization of SAR data.
• Currently, the following two functions are provided:
• LUC (Land Use/cover Classification): a tool for image classification with object-
based machine learning algorithms.
• Gamma-zero change: a tool for extracting changes such as deforestation using
differences of backscattering coefficients observed at two different times.
• OS: Microsoft Windows 7/8 64 bit.
• http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS-2/en/doc/pal2_tool.htm
Let’s SAR