Provider specification

Become a data provider at Cecil and join our partnership program. This document describes the advantages and technical specification for integrating nature datasets with the Cecil platform.

Why integrate with Cecil

  • Cecil provides an additional distribution channel for your organisation. Our customers will discover your datasets through our public announcements and product documentation.

  • Our unique value proposition is to deliver an intuitive developer experience. Our customers will acquire and analyse your datasets in a few simple steps.

  • We are fully compatible with leading organisations and spatial technologies. This will enable our customers to use your datasets with their preferred systems, tools, and libraries.

  • We take the time to learn about your product details and we embrace customer success. This will reduce your efforts in customer onboarding and support.

  • We offer a pricing model that doesn’t have minimum usage requirements and we enable our customers to scale in a cost effective manner.

Process overview

There are 3 high-level steps across the end-to-end integration.

  • Data acquisition: Cecil initiates the process by sending an API request to your organisation.

  • Webhook events: Your organisation provides successful and erroneous status updates.

  • Data delivery: Your organisation finalises the process by making files available for download.

Data acquisition

Cecil requires an API endpoint from your organisation that allows submitting a request on behalf of a customer to acquire a dataset for their area of interest (AOI).

Minimum requirements

  • Request body containing a GeoJSON geometry object in EPSG:4326 delimiting the boundaries of the AOI and coordinates type as Polygon or MultiPolygon.

  • Response body containing a resource ID representing Cecil’s subscription in your system, or parseable data structures containing descriptive error messages when applicable.

Recommended

  • Request body with optional parameters that may be available in your product. For example, the ability to select specific variables and subscription settings.

  • Response body with additional information that may be relevant to Cecil and customers.

Webhook notifications

Cecil requires status updates via webhooks. All webhook notifications must provide the following information and a cryptographic signature in SHA256.

  • Resource ID representing Cecil’s subscription in your system.

  • All status transitions including at least one successful and one erroneous status in your system (e.g. completed, failed). We recommend multiple erroneous statuses to indicate each potential issue that may require graceful error handling.

  • Completed webhook events must only be sent to Cecil once all files are available for download.

Data delivery

Cecil requires the following steps and HTTP endpoints for data delivery.

  • Your organisation submits a completed webhook event to the Cecil API.

  • Your organisation provides an API endpoint to list all files available for download.

  • Your organisation provides a resource URL to download each file individually.

Data format

Cecil requires Cloud Optimised GeoTIFF (COG) files containing industry standard metadata, coordinate reference system (CRS), and explicit NoData values.

We accept single-band or multi-band files with a consistent timestamp in the filename to indicate the time step for all data in the file. For example, Planet uses the following file naming convention.

/timestamp/variable-suffix.tiff

The optional suffix, when available, indicates pixel-level metadata such as quality scores and uncertainty estimates. Below are concrete examples of Planet files.

/2025/12/31/23/59/59/canopy-cover.tiff
/2025/12/31/23/59/59/canopy-cover-qa.tiff
/2025/12/31/23/59/59/canopy-cover-uc.tiff

Next steps

Please send an email to Alex Logan (first name at cecil.earth) including a brief introduction, links to your organisation website, API documentation, scientific white papers, and pricing information.

We believe in highly collaborative partnerships. Even if you don’t think your organisation meets all requirements for integrating with Cecil, we would love to explore an integration path forward.