Billion Object Platform V2.0
The Billion Object Platform (BOP) V2 is a cloud-based visualization tool powered by HEAVY.AI (a GPU database that was invented at the CGA), which provides a robust big data exploration platform, with API access, for geospatial data.
The BOP's primary aim is to facilitate interactive visualization and analysis of large, spatio-temporal datasets, addressing the challenges that traditional geospatial tools face with datasets containing more than a few million features. By overcoming these limitations, BOP reduces barriers for scholars and researchers seeking to work with extensive geospatial data.
BOP V2 builds on the original Billion Object Platform developed through a Sloan-funded collaboration between CGA and IQSS to enable visualization of big spatial data within Dataverse. The project invented 2d faceting, a new type of big data visualization conceived by Ben Lewis and David Smiley in 2014.
Use Cases/Publications:
- Corti, P., Lewis B., Kralidis, A., Mwenda, N. 2016. Implementing an open source spatio-temporal search platform for Spatial Data Infrastructures. PeerJ Preprints 4:e2238v7 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2238v7
- Corti, P., Lewis, B. (2017) Making temporal search more central in spatial data infrastructures Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Volume IV-4/W2. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-4-W2-93-2017
- Kakkar, D., Lewis, B., Smiley, D., & Nunez, A. (2017). The Billion Object Platform (BOP): A system to lower barriers to support big, streaming, spatio-temporal data sources. OSGeo Journal, 17(1), 113–122. https://doi.org/10.7275/R5ST7N0G
- Jain, D., Blossom, J., Wang, H. Digitalizing Journalist Paul Salopek’s decade-long walk of 24,000-mile odyssey. National Geographic Case Study, 2024.
- Jain, D., Billion Object Platform, Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC), SC '22.