Why GeoParquet is the best choice for Ecoscope data
Built for Big Data. Ecoscope often deals with huge GPS tracking datasets — millions of animal locations. GeoParquet handles this kind of data far faster and in much smaller files than the older formats.
It's smaller and faster. GeoParquet files are highly compressed, so they take up a fraction of the space of a shapefile or GeoPackage, and they open and process much more quickly.
It's one clean file. A shapefile is actually a bundle of several files that have to stay together — easy to break or lose. GeoParquet is a single, self-contained file with no messy pieces.
The spatial reference is built in. Every spatial dataset needs a "CRS" — the coordinate system that tells your software where on Earth the data belongs. In a shapefile this is kept in a separate little sidecar file (the .prj), and if it goes missing your data can end up in the wrong place or won't line up with anything. GeoParquet stores the CRS inside the file itself, so the location info always travels with the data and can't get lost.
It remembers what your data actually is. This is a big one compared to a CSV. In a CSV, everything is just plain text, so a date like 2024-03-15 08:30 is stored as characters — and when you reopen it, your software has to guess whether that's a date, a number, or just text (and it often guesses wrong) - “was it month/day/year or day/month/year?” GeoParquet stores the type of each column along with the data, so a date stays a proper date, a number stays a number, and coordinates stay coordinates. Nothing gets scrambled or misread when you open the file later.
It keeps dates and times together. Shapefiles can't store a full date and time in the same column — they only hold the date, so the time part (crucial for GPS tracking, where every fix has a timestamp) gets dropped or has to be split into a separate column. GeoParquet keeps the full date-and-time timestamp intact in a single column, exactly as it should be.
No annoying limits. Shapefiles have other frustrating restrictions too (size caps, shortened column names, patchy support for text). GeoParquet has none of those.
It works seamlessly with Ecoscope's tools. Ecoscope is built on modern data tools that speak GeoParquet naturally, so everything just fits together.
Using it in QGIS
Recent versions of QGIS (3.34 and newer) open GeoParquet out of the box. Just drag the .parquet file onto the map, or use Layer ▸ Add Layer ▸ Add Vector Layer and select it. To save data as GeoParquet, right-click a layer, choose Export ▸ Save Features As, and pick the GeoParquet option.
Using it in ArcGIS
ArcGIS Pro (version 3.2 and newer) also reads GeoParquet directly — just point it at the file. If your version doesn't support it yet, you can quickly convert the file to a format ArcGIS recognizes.