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Explore Data on ODP

ODP helps you move from discovery to understanding before you download anything. You can search the public catalog, inspect dataset and collection metadata, preview compatible files, and explore tabular data directly in the browser.

Before you begin

No account is required to browse the catalog for public datasets. To access private or shared datasets, to consume data or use our more interactive web features (querying, visualization) you will need an ODP account. You can register here.

Steps

1. Search the catalog

The public catalog shows published datasets and data collections. You can search by keyword and refine the results with domain, map, and time filters.

Go to app.hubocean.earth/catalog and use:

  • the search bar for keyword or semantic search
  • the map tools to draw an area of interest
  • date filters to narrow by time coverage
  • domain filters to reduce the result set

Spatial and time filters use catalog metadata

These searches work on the metadata recorded for the dataset, such as its bounding box or time coverage. They do not search inside the underlying rows or files themselves, so the real data coverage may be smaller than the catalog footprint.

2. Open a dataset or collection page

Open a result to inspect what it contains and whether it fits your needs. Dataset and collection pages show the catalog layer: title, description, provider, license, temporal coverage, and spatial coverage.

At this stage, check:

  • what the data is about
  • who published or provided it
  • whether the license works for your use case
  • whether the spatial and temporal coverage are relevant

If you are unsure about datasets versus collections, see the Glossary.

3. Understand what data is available

From the dataset page, first identify what kind of data the dataset contains.

  • If the dataset contains a table, the ODP dataset landing page will show the data size and shape (number of rows and columns), some sample rows, column information, and profiling statistics for each column. Column descriptions appear as tooltips when the provider has added them.
  • If the dataset contains files, you can filter and browse the files, inspect file metadata (click on the filename), preview supported formats (such as PDF, text or images), and download individual files.

4. Explore tabular data

The Explore table view is designed for interactive inspection and filtered export. It works on a subset suitable for browser-based exploration, so it is not intended to load all the rows of large result sets into memory.

  • filter the data by column values
  • apply geospatial filtering on the map when the data includes spatial information
  • colour row geometries on the map in distinct colours based on column values

The beta Explore map view is designed for full geo-spatial data layer interactive exploration powered by the vector tiles service.

  • clicking on a data point provides information on that feature
  • zooming into the map interactively loads increasing resolution

5. Explore files

If the dataset includes files, use the files view to understand what is available.

You can:

  • see file names, sizes, and timestamps
  • inspect file-level metadata
  • filter the file list when there are many files
  • preview supported formats such as text files, PDFs, and images
  • download individual files directly in the browser

6. Download or connect programmatically

Once you have identified some data to work with, choose the access method that fits your workflow.

You can:

  • download individual uploaded files
  • export full dataset tabular data from the browser as CSV, GeoJSON, or Parquet
  • download filtered tabular results from the explore table view
  • use the dataset UUID from Python or R
  • connect through OGC API - Features for GIS workflows
  • use a vector tile endpoint for large geospatial visualisation workflows

For more detail on these methods, see Use data in your workflows.

Result

You can now search the catalog, assess whether a dataset is relevant, and decide whether to download files, explore a table further, or connect through a programmatic workflow.

Next steps