Planet makes available select imagery for major disaster events, including major earthquakes, floods, storms, wildfires, and human-made disasters. These are available here in a STAC Catalog under a CC-BY-NC license. See the Planet Disaster Data page for more information.
# Planet Crisis Response — Colombia Earthquake (2026)
STAC/Portolan catalog of post- and pre-event Planet imagery over western Colombia after the
M7.4 earthquake of 10 Aug 2026, 12:34 UTC. Epicentre 5 km S of San José del Palmar, Chocó
(4.844N, 76.242W), depth 110 km, USGS orange PAGER; M5.0 aftershock at 13:18 UTC. The deep
hypocentre spread shaking across Chocó, Valle del Cauca, Cauca and Risaralda. Imagery ©
Planet Labs PBC, CC-BY-NC-4.0 (non-commercial).
## Layout
- Root: `catalog.json` → children `post-event/catalog.json` and `pre-event/catalog.json`.
- `post-event/` (69 items):
- `planetscope-2026-08-10` — PlanetScope PSB.SD, 57 scenes, two passes 15:31 and 16:18 UTC,
bbox 76.63W–75.20W / 2.61N–5.42N. Includes the epicentre.
- `skysat-2026-08-10` — SkySat ~0.66 m, 2 collects, 19:56 UTC, over Quibdó (capital of
Chocó), bbox 76.67W–76.62W / 5.61N–5.80N. ~105 km NNW of the epicentre, not over it.
- `planetscope-2026-08-11` — PlanetScope PSB.SD, 2 scenes, 16:04 UTC, over the Quindío
coffee axis, bbox 75.90W–75.55W / 4.34N–4.69N, ~60 km E of the epicentre. 7–9% cloud.
Assets: visual, analytic_sr, udm2.
- `skysat-2026-08-11` — SkySat ~0.8 m, 3 collects, 12:44 UTC the next day, a strip across
Cali (~2.2M people), bbox 76.65W–76.20W / 3.36N–3.62N, ~143–164 km S of the epicentre.
Cloud-free. Assets: visual, pansharpened, udm2, udm.
- `pelican-2026-08-13` — Pelican ~0.62 m, 3 scenes from one strip, 15:44 UTC, over
Buenaventura (Colombia's principal Pacific port), bbox 77.17W–76.87W / 3.81N–3.95N,
~138 km SW of the epicentre. The catalog's first Pelican collection. Assets: visual,
pansharpened, udm2.
- `skysat-2026-08-13` — SkySat ~0.64 m, 2 collects, 12:01 UTC, a second pass over Quibdó,
bbox 76.68W–76.61W / 5.58N–5.79N. 12% cloud. Assets: visual, pansharpened, udm2, udm.
- `pre-event/` (93 items):
- `basemap-2026q2` — Planet global quarterly basemap `global_quarterly_2026q2_mosaic`,
93 quads at ~4.8 m, bbox 77.17W–75.06W / 2.64N–6.32N, containing all post-event
footprints.
- Post-event collections are keyed by **sensor-date**: dates repeat across sensors, and 3 m
PlanetScope, 0.66 m and 0.8 m SkySat do not belong in one collection.
- Item ids are Planet scene/collect ids for scenes, and `<x>-<y>` quad ids for the basemap.
Items live at `<phase>/<key>/items/<id>/<id>.json` with COGs beside them.
## Assets per Item (keys)
- `visual` — true-colour RGB ortho COG (8-bit). (all collections)
- `analytic_sr` — 4-band surface-reflectance analytic COG, UInt16. (PlanetScope)
- `udm2` — usable data mask, 8-band, per-pixel quality. (PlanetScope)
- `pansharpened` — pansharpened ortho COG, UInt16; 4-band on SkySat, 6-band on Pelican.
(SkySat, Pelican)
- `udm` — unusable data mask. (SkySat 11 Aug, SkySat 13 Aug)
## Time semantics
- Scene Items carry a real acquisition instant in `datetime`.
- Basemap quad Items are a **quarterly composite**, not a single acquisition: `start_datetime`
= 2026-04-01, `end_datetime` = 2026-07-01, and `datetime` is set to the window midpoint so
that datetime-indexing tools still work. Treat it as a seasonal reference, not a
before-image from a specific day.
## Cloud cover
- PlanetScope: median 2%, range 0–45%; only 6 of 57 scenes above 20%. Unusually clear for
Chocó in August.
- SkySat 10 Aug (Quibdó): both collects 36%.
- PlanetScope 11 Aug (Quindío): 9% and 7%.
- SkySat 11 Aug (Cali): all three collects 0% — cloud-free.
- SkySat 13 Aug (Quibdó): both collects 12%.
- Pelican 13 Aug (Buenaventura): 47%, 55% and 39% — the cloudiest collection in the catalog,
leaving only 37%, 29% and 51% of each scene clear. The UDM2 is essential here.
- Basemap quads: all 93 at 100% coverage (cloud-screened composite).
## Projections
- Scene COGs are in UTM (per-scene EPSG, see `proj:` fields).
- Basemap quads are in **Web Mercator, EPSG:3857**, 4096×4096 px at 4.777 m. Reproject before
pixel-wise comparison with the scenes.
## Caveats on the 13 Aug collections
- Two of the three Pelican scenes report `pl:ground_control = false`, so their absolute
geolocation is uncorrected and may be offset by more than a pixel at 0.62 m. Co-register
before differencing against any other source.
- Pelican pansharpened products carry no `bands` in Planet's delivery, so the six band
identities are not described in the metadata.
- The 13 Aug SkySat pass over Quibdó is a 13.6 degree sun elevation — very low. Expect long
shadows and poorly lit north-facing slopes; prefer the 10 Aug pass for radiometric work.
## Intended use
- Building-level damage assessment over Quibdó (10 and 13 Aug) and Cali (11 Aug,
cloud-free) from the sub-metre SkySat collects, and over the port of Buenaventura
(13 Aug) from the Pelican strip.
- The paired 10 Aug and 13 Aug SkySat passes over Quibdó support three-day change detection
on the same footprint.
- Wide-area landslide and damage mapping from the 57 PlanetScope scenes; landsliding in steep
wet terrain is the dominant hazard for a deep event of this size.
- Change detection against the Q2 2026 basemap baseline.
## Access notes
- All asset hrefs are relative in the item JSON. Objects carry no `self` link (the Portolan
profile keeps catalogs relocatable), so resolve them against the URL you fetched the item
from.
- Per-collection and per-folder `items.parquet` (STAC-GeoParquet) indexes are available.
- COGs are cloud-optimized: use GDAL/rasterio, rio-tiler, DuckDB, or HTTP range requests; read
overviews for previews rather than downloading whole files.