FlatGeobuf is a performant binary encoding for geographic data that works well as a “cloud native” lossless format for vector data.

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is looking to adopt FlatGeobuf as an official OGC Community Standard. Comments are due by March 13, 2023.

FlatGeobuf is a performant binary encoding for geographic data that can hold a collection of Simple Features. Because of its simple core design and efficient I/O handling, FlatGeobuf can work well as a “cloud native” lossless format for vector data. FlatGeobuf is based on flatbuffers.

FlatGeobuf was designed to be: suitable for storing and accessing large volumes of static data; significantly faster than legacy formats; unconstrained by size limitations for contents or metainformation, and; suitable for streaming/random access. No other current format combines good performance and “cloud native” design.