GIS Integrations

QGIS: Browse and Stream Your Raad Catalog (STAC)

QGIS: Browse and Stream Your Raad Catalog (STAC)

Connecting QGIS to the Raad STAC catalog turns it into a browsing front-end for your aerial data:

  • A browsable tree of every site, capture, and asset your account can see — the same data as your dashboard
  • A search dialog that lists captures with thumbnail previews, acquisition dates, and map footprints
  • One-drag streaming of orthophotos, DSM/DTM elevation rasters, and point clouds onto the canvas — QGIS fetches only what you look at, straight from cloud storage, no downloading multi-gigabyte files
  • Full metadata per capture: sensor, flight pattern, coverage %, area, image counts, quality grade, processing lineage

Everything is scoped to your account automatically: the catalog contains exactly what you can see in your Raad dashboard.

STAC vs XYZ tiles vs WMS — which do I want?

  • XYZ raster tiles or WMS — pick these when you just want your imagery as a background layer. See the GIS Integrations guide for connection steps.
  • STAC — pick this when you want to browse, search, preview, and work with individual captures and their derived data (elevation, point clouds, source photos).

They complement each other; the recipe section below stacks them.

Requirements

  • A recent QGIS — STAC browsing is built into the Browser panel and Data Source Manager out of the box (native since QGIS 3.42, and throughout QGIS 4.x). No plugins needed.
  • Your map access token — find it under Account Settings → Integrations.
cURL
Authorization: Bearer YOUR_MAP_ACCESS_TOKEN

QGIS auth configurations are reusable: one HTTP-Header config can be attached to your STAC, XYZ, WMS, and WFS connections alike.

Step 1 — Add the STAC connection

  1. Open the Browser panel (View → Panels → Browser)
  2. Right-click STAC → New STAC Connection…
  3. Fill in:
cURL
Name: Raad
URL:  https://app.raad.com/stac
  1. In the Authentication section, click the green +, choose HTTP Header authentication and set the header name to Authorization and the value to your Bearer token string, then save. Select the new config back in the connection dialog.
  2. Click OK — the Raad catalog appears in the tree.

Step 2 — Browse the catalog tree

Expand Raad and you will see one node per site. Each site expands into typed sub-collections:

  • Surveys — one item per completed aerial capture. Assets per item: Orthophoto (COG), DSM and DTM (COGs), Point Cloud (COPC LAZ), OBJ/GLB 3D models, Imagery Report (PDF), preview thumbnail, and image capture locations.
  • Coverage Groups — acquisition sets per mission, geometry, and sensor, with coverage %, area, and image counts.
  • Artifact Groups — curated photo groups per site geometry and capture date.
  • Raw Imagery — one item per captured photo, with its EXIF metadata and ground footprint.

The site node itself carries site_geometries and per-system-type geometry assets (building structure, cooling, power, capture area) as GeoJSON.

Right-click any item and choose Details… to see its full metadata plus a coverage map.

Step 3 — Search with previews (the item finder)

For anything beyond browsing, use the search dialog:

  1. Open Layer → Data Source Manager → STAC and select your Raad connection
  2. Click Filters… and set any combination of:
    • Spatial Extent — from the current map extent or a box you draw
    • Temporal Extent — a date range
    • Only search within specific collections — limit to one or more sites
  3. Results list each capture with a thumbnail, acquisition date, platform/sensor, and cloud cover. Check Show Footprints to outline every result on the canvas.
  4. Page through results with Next/Previous (25 per page), tick the ones you want, and add them.

Behind the scenes this hits the catalog’s search endpoint, which also supports a free-text q parameter matching site and mission names — handy when scripting (see the GIS Integrations guide for API examples).

Step 4 — Stream data onto the canvas

From the Browser tree or the search results, drag an asset onto the map:

Streams directly into QGIS (no download):

  • Orthophoto (COG) — full-resolution orthorectified imagery; loads and pans instantly because QGIS requests only the visible tiles over HTTP range requests
  • DSM / DTM (COGs) — elevation rasters; style with hillshade or singleband pseudocolor symbology
  • Point Cloud (COPC) — streams as a point cloud layer (QGIS 3.26+); open a 3D Map View (View → 3D Map Views) to walk around buildings and vegetation

Download-only (by design):

  • GeoJSON site geometries and footprints — use WFS or vector tiles instead for a click-to-add experience (see below)
  • Source photos (JPEG) — oblique drone photos carry no georeferencing and cannot be draped on a map; see the next section
  • PDF reports and OBJ/GLB 3D models

Asset links mint fresh credentials on every request, so streamed layers keep working indefinitely — reopen a saved project weeks later and layers reload without re-authenticating the assets.

Working with individual photos

Raw-imagery items each represent one captured photo. The good QGIS workflow is footprints-plus-links rather than rasters:

  1. Search or browse the site’s Raw Imagery sub-collection and enable Show Footprints — each photo’s ground footprint outlines on the map at its true position
  2. Open an item to see EXIF details (camera, altitude, gimbal pitch, heading, timestamp)
  3. Download the full JPEG or its EXIF thumbnail from the item’s assets when you need the photo itself

For interactive photo overviews, the map in your Raad dashboard remains the fastest option.

Site geometry and boundaries

Site geometry layers (building structure, cooling, grid power, capture areas) are best added as editable vectors rather than through STAC downloads:

cURL
WFS:          https://app.raad.com/wfs
Vector tiles: https://app.raad.com/vectors/sites/{z}/{x}/{y}

Steps and styling tips (including styling by system_type) are in the GIS Integrations guide. The same layer set is also available per-site in the STAC tree as downloadable GeoJSON broken out by system type.

The full-fat project recipe

A solid layer stack for a Raad QGIS project, bottom to top:

  1. XYZ orthophoto mosaic (https://app.raad.com/tiles/{z}/{x}/{y}.png) — your latest approved imagery across every site as the basemap
  2. Streamed Orthophoto COGs for the specific captures you are analyzing at native resolution
  3. DSM with a hillshade blend for terrain-aware context
  4. WFS site geometry layers, styled per system type
  5. Raw-imagery footprints for photo browsing
  6. COPC point clouds plus a 3D Map View for structural inspection

Troubleshooting

  • Empty tree or broken thumbnails — the connection is failing auth. Recheck that the header value starts with Bearer followed by a space and your current token.
  • A site or capture you expect is missing — the catalog only shows approved, completed data for your account, same visibility rules as the dashboard.
  • Nothing under a capture expands into assets — your QGIS is older than 3.42 (before native STAC browsing); upgrade to the current release — no plugins are involved in any of these steps.
  • A COG layer seems empty — right-click it → Zoom to Layer, and check your project CRS (EPSG:3857 or 4326 both work).
  • After regenerating your map access token — old connections and saved layers 401 immediately. Update the QGIS auth config and re-add any saved layers.
  • Saved project files contain your token in layer URLs — treat .qgz/.qgs files as credentials and share them only with trusted teammates.
  • ArcGIS users — ArcGIS Pro 3.2+ supports STAC connections natively; point it at the same catalog URL with the same Bearer header.

Next steps

  • Scripting and bulk access: the GIS Integrations guide has pystac-client examples for search (bbox, datetime, q free text) and download loops.
  • Programmatic item shapes and the full asset list: https://app.raad.com/stac/collections/{site-uuid}/items — pull it up with curl while reading this guide.