Free GIS & Remote‑Sensing Toolkit 🌍

Free GIS & Remote‑Sensing Toolkit 🌍🛰️

Education, Natural ScienceApril 21, 20250 Comments

This post is a quick reference to free and open‑source resources for GIS and remote sensing. It notes core desktop packages (QGIS, GRASS), cloud services (Google Earth Engine, Planetary Computer), open data sources (Sentinel, Landsat, OpenStreetMap), and machine‑learning libraries geared to geospatial tasks. It also points to training material such as NASA ARSET webinars and EO‑College MOOCs. The list should be enough to set up a full workflow without licensing costs.

Core desktop GIS you can install today

Tool	What it’s great for	Notes
QGIS 3.42	All‑purpose mapping/analysis with 1,700+ plugins	Brand‑new release (Mar 2025) with 3‑D mesh layer styling and native cloud‑optimized‑GeoTIFF support.
GRASS GIS 8.4	Powerful raster/vector processing, time‑series & hydrology	Still CLI‑first, but the new GUI in 8.x is friendlier.
SAGA‑GIS / gvSIG	Raster terrain analysis (SAGA) or CAD‑style editing (gvSIG)	100 % open source; both plug neatly into QGIS Processing.
WhiteboxTools	500‑plus niche raster & LiDAR tools (flow paths, TSP routing, etc.)	Command‑line, Python or QGIS/ArcGIS plugin.

Remote‑sensing processing suites

ESA SNAP – Sentinel‑1/‑2/‑3, atmospheric correction (Sen2Cor), SAR polarimetry.
Orfeo ToolBox 9.1 – Terabyte‑scale optical + SAR workflows, C++/Python/GUI apps.
GDAL 3.8+ – Ubiquitous format converter & API; latest 3.8.5 drop (Apr 2024).

Python/Notebook stack (glues everything together)

geopandas, rasterio, pyproj, shapely – spatial dataframes & raster IO.
leafmap gives drag‑and‑drop widgets (streamlit/voilà) plus hooks to WhiteboxTools.

Free cloud & big‑data platforms

Platform	Quota / cost model	Typical use
Google Earth Engine	Free for research/edu; API call & storage quotas apply.	Server‑side planetary‑scale processing (Sentinel, Landsat, MODIS, ERA‑5…).
Microsoft Planetary Computer	Free token; STAC API + Dask Hub notebook.	Analysis‑ready COG/Parquet copies of Sentinel‑1/‑2, Landsat, OpenStreetMap etc.
Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem	Unlimited, real‑time Sentinel download & browser.
Alaska Satellite Facility	Unlimited, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data products and tools.

Open imagery & vector data sources

Sentinel‑1/‑2/‑3 via Copernicus Data Space.
Landsat 1‑9 plus NAIP, ASTER, etc. from USGS EarthExplorer.
AWS Registry of Open Data – COG versions of Sentinel‑2, NAIP, DEMs.
OpenStreetMap extracts (PBF/GeoJSON) for global roads, buildings.
Natural Earth – ready‑to‑map vector & raster layers at 1:10 m–1:110 m.

AI / machine‑learning toolkits for geospatial

Library	Niche	Why use it
TorchGeo	PyTorch dataloaders + pretrained models for multispectral/SAR.	Handles tiling & CRS alignment for you.
Raster Vision	Config‑driven pipelines (classification, object detection, seg).	Spin up on‑prem or AWS SageMaker.
eo‑learn	End‑to‑end EO ML workflow blocks (cloud mask ➜ features ➜ model).
SAMGeo / Geo‑SAM	Wraps Meta’s Segment Anything 2 for QGIS & notebooks.

Structured learning & lectures (always free)

NASA ARSET – live & on‑demand webinars (fundamentals, water height, fires…).
EO‑College MOOCs – self‑paced Radar, Hyperspectral, Food‑Security courses.
Esri free MOOCs (Spatial Analysis, Cartography, Climate‑Action…) come with temporary ArcGIS Pro/Online licenses.
ITC University of Twente short online courses – applied GIS/RS methods.