FlatGeobuf — The GIS Format Built for Large Datasets and Cloud Streaming
If you’re still reaching for Shapefile or GeoJSON as your default format for large static datasets, FlatGeobuf is worth understanding. It’s been in GDAL since version 3.1 (2020) and QGIS since 3.16 — but most teams still haven’t adopted it where it provides the clearest advantage: large datasets served from cloud storage. Here’s what it does, how its internals work, and where it outperforms the alternatives. What FlatGeobuf Is FlatGeobuf is a binary encoding for vector geographic data built on FlatBuffers, a cross-platform serialization library developed at Google. A FlatGeobuf file has four sections in fixed order: ...