OpenTopography for Developers

Learn how to access data via APIs and leverage OpenTopography services for your applications.

OpenTopography Services

RESTful Web service for global raster data access

RESTful Web services for accessing Shuttle Radar Topography Mission GL3 (Global 90m), GL1 (Global 30m), GL1 Ellipsoidal, ALOS World 3D (Global 30m), and ALOS World 3D Ellipsoidal data.

Base URL
http://opentopo.sdsc.edu/otr/

Required Parameters
You must POST the following parameters:

Parameters Description
demtype The global raster dataset - SRTM GL3 (90m) is 'SRTMGL3', SRTM GL1 (30m) is 'SRTMGL1', SRTM GL1 (Ellipsoidal) is 'SRTMGL1_E', and ALOS World 3D 30m is 'AW3D30', ALOS World 3D (Ellipsoidal) is 'AW3D30_E'
west, south, east, north WGS 84 bounding box coordinates
outputFormat outputFormat Output Format (optional) - GTiff for GeoTiff, AAIGrid for Arc ASCII Grid, HFA for Erdas Imagine (.IMG). Defaults to GTiff if parameter is not provided

Output
GeoTIFF (Default), Arc ASCII Grid, IMG

EXAMPLE (GL3 datatset for a given bounding box in GeoTiff format):
http://opentopo.sdsc.edu/otr/getdem?demtype=SRTMGL3&west=-120.168457&south=36.738884&east=-118.465576&north=38.091337&outputFormat=GTiff

Catalogue Service for the Web

CSW (Catalogue Service for the Web) is an OGC (Open Geospatial Consortium) specification that defines common interfaces to discover, browse, and query metadata about data and services. OpenTopography provides access to its data catalog via the CSW standard. Any client supporting the CSW standard can integrate the OpenTopography CSW endpoint.

OpenTopography CSW
OpenTopography's CSW endpoints are implemented using the open source Esri Geoportal Server with support for the OGC CS-W 2.0.2 standard. It supports REST, GeoRSS, OpenSearch, CSW, ATOM, GeoJSON, KML, and HTML to expose content from the catalog service to external clients.

GetCapabilities
The GetCapabilities operation provides CSW clients with service metadata about the CSW service as an XML document.
Example:
HTTP GET:
http://opentopo.sdsc.edu/geoportal/csw/discovery?Request=GetCapabilities&Service=CSW&Version=2.0.2

GetRecordById
Example:
http://opentopo.sdsc.edu/geoportal/csw?REQUEST=GetRecordById&service=CSW&version=2.0.2&Id={71714DC6-EB72-46BE-8F3E-C9A20BFE9933}

For more supported operations please follow the sample requests shown on https://github.com/Esri/geoportal-server/wiki/Catalog-Service and geoportal server as a Broker help document for the different service protocols supported using the base URL http://opentopo.sdsc.edu/geoportal/csw

Related services

RESTful Web service for Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) synthesis data access

This web service from the Marine Geoscience Data System (MGDS) is used by OpenTopography's GMRT dataset interface. OpenTopography generates the proper service call based on user input through our user interface and downloads the result to our servers. Then, we perform additional processing as requested by the user, such as visualizations and hydrologic analysis. More information on the GMRT web service is available on the MGDS website.

Example:
http://www.marine-geo.org/services/GridServer?north=-2.9928&west=-90.0000&east=-69.2578&south=-19.4825&layer=topo&format=geotiff&resolution=high