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Access 14 TB of Free High-Resolution Satellite Imagery with the Maxar Open Data QGIS Plugin

The Maxar Open Data Program (now the Vantor Open Data Program) provides free high-resolution satellite imagery to support global disaster response and recovery. To date, it has released around 150,000 images totaling approximately 14 TB, all freely accessible through the AWS Open Data Program. The imagery ranges from 30 to 50 cm resolution, making it some of the highest-resolution satellite data available for free.

Despite its tremendous value, searching, visualizing, and downloading this data has often been challenging, especially for users who do not work with AWS or write code. The Maxar Open Data QGIS plugin solves this by letting you search, filter, preview, and download imagery directly inside QGIS with no programming required.

In this tutorial, I walk through the full workflow: installing the plugin, browsing events, visualizing pre- and post-event imagery, comparing changes with a swipe tool, and downloading data to your computer.

Video tutorial: Maxar Open Data QGIS Plugin Tutorial

What You Will Need

No AWS account or programming skills are required. The plugin handles all data access through public endpoints.

Install the Plugin

  1. Go to Plugins > Manage and Install Plugins.

  2. Search for maxar.

  3. Click Install Plugin.

After installation, the Maxar Open Data menu appears in the menu bar. Click Check for Updates to make sure you have the latest version, since the official plugin repository may lag behind the GitHub release by a few days. Restart QGIS after updating.

Browse and Load Event Footprints

The Maxar Open Data Program organizes imagery by events (disasters, emergencies, etc.). Each event contains multiple image tiles captured before and after the event.

  1. Click Maxar Open Data > Open Data Panel to open the plugin panel on the right side of QGIS.

  2. Select an event from the dropdown list (e.g., “Libya Flood September 2023”).

  3. Optionally filter by date to separate pre-event and post-event imagery.

  4. Click Load Footprints to display all tile footprints on the map.

The footprints appear as polygons on the map, and a table on the right shows metadata for each tile: platform, ground sample distance (GSD), catalog ID, and acquisition date.

Select and Visualize Imagery

Select from the table

Click any row in the results table to highlight the corresponding footprint on the map. Click Zoom to Selected to navigate to that tile. You can select multiple rows by holding Ctrl or Shift.

Select from the map

For more precise selection, use the Select Features by Polygon tool from the QGIS Vector menu:

  1. Activate the tool.

  2. Draw a polygon around the tiles you want.

  3. Right-click to finish the selection.

This is better than the default single-click selection because it captures all overlapping tiles (e.g., one pre-event and one post-event image covering the same area).

Load imagery

With tiles selected, click one of the load buttons:

The imagery streams directly from AWS on demand without downloading the full files to your computer.

Compare Pre- and Post-Event Imagery

For disaster assessment, comparing imagery from before and after an event is essential. The LeafMap plugin provides a swipe tool that makes this easy:

  1. Install the LeafMap plugin from the Plugin Manager if you have not already.

  2. Load both a pre-event and post-event image for the same area.

  3. Click the Layer Swipe button in the LeafMap toolbar.

  4. Select the pre-event image as the left layer and the post-event image as the right layer.

  5. Click Activate Swipe and drag the divider to compare the two time periods.

For the Libya flood example, the swipe tool clearly shows infrastructure damage: roads washed away, bridges destroyed, and entire areas flooded.

You can also use the Layer Transparency tool to adjust opacity and overlay the two images for a different perspective.

Download Imagery

To download imagery to your local computer:

  1. Select the tiles you want (using the table or map selection).

  2. Click the appropriate download button:

    • Download Visual for RGB imagery

    • Download MS for multispectral imagery

    • Download Panchromatic for the panchromatic band

  3. Choose an output directory.

The plugin downloads all selected tiles automatically, showing progress in the status bar. Downloaded files are standard GeoTIFF format that you can use in any GIS software or deep learning workflow.

Work with Multispectral Data

When multispectral imagery is available, the downloaded files contain up to 8 spectral bands. You can customize the band combination in QGIS:

  1. Double-click the layer to open Layer Properties.

  2. Go to the Symbology tab.

  3. Change the band assignment (e.g., bands 5, 4, 3 for a false color composite).

  4. Click Apply.

The multispectral data typically has a coarser resolution (around 1.2 m) compared to the visual imagery (30-50 cm), since the panchromatic band captures the highest spatial detail.

Resources

This plugin makes high-resolution satellite imagery accessible to anyone with QGIS, whether you are conducting damage assessment, training deep learning models, or simply exploring how disasters reshape landscapes. Feel free to open an issue on the GitHub repository if you run into any problems.