In the previous article, Loading the Geovis Earth Basemap in ArcGIS Pro, ArcMap, and QGIS, I introduced the free Geovis Earth basemap service. Recently, some readers asked whether I could create a tutorial on loading imagery from Siwei Earth.
So I gave it a try — and yes, it technically works (using their free API). However, the imagery turned out to have major positional offsets, making it unsuitable for practical use. Still, the API extraction method itself is quite interesting, so let’s explore it.
PS: If you’re only looking for a usable basemap URL, you can skip this post. I’ve tested it — it doesn’t work properly.
Above: The loaded data shows significant offset issues.
About Siwei Earth
Siwei Earth claims to be China’s largest and most advanced next-generation remote sensing cloud platform. Its product lines include the Global Regional Basemap and Daily Update Map.
The Global Regional Basemap provides global tiled imagery, unified through fusion and mosaic processing for consistent image quality, color balance, and timeliness.
The Daily Update Map offers scene-based, frequently updated remote sensing imagery and long-term, high-precision historical data services.
Official website: https://siweiearth.com/sw-nav/nav
Currently, both major products are paid services — no public API trials are available.
Extracting Siwei Earth WMTS URLs
Since there’s no official free API and I don’t have a budget to purchase the imagery, is there another way?
Of course. The simplest approach is packet capture. Nowadays, with the help of certain browser plugins, you don’t even need complex sniffing tools to capture map service URLs.
You can refer to my earlier article, Geo Hound: Automatically Discover and Capture GIS Map Services from Any Website - MalaGIS, for the tool and usage.
It’s very easy to use — open the Siwei Earth website and wait a moment; the plugin will automatically capture the URL at the bottom-right corner, as shown below:
Once you have the captured URL, you can add it directly in ArcGIS Pro via:
Insert → Connections → Server → New WMTS Server, then paste the URL.
After adding it, you should see it appear as shown below:
Note: The captured basemap URLs may expire after a while, making them unusable. If that happens, simply run Geo Hound again to get a fresh URL.
Offset Issues
Initially, I thought I had found a clever way to access a basemap for free. But don’t celebrate too soon — once you add the captured URL to ArcGIS Pro, you’ll see that the imagery has a massive spatial offset, as shown below:
The offset is so large that it makes the data essentially unusable. It’s understandable though — as a commercial company, Siwei Earth has to control costs, and unrestricted public access would generate significant bandwidth expenses.
Summary
The browser-based Geo Hound plugin is a convenient tool for obtaining Siwei Earth’s WMTS service URLs. Unfortunately, the imagery currently available through this method all suffers from severe offsets.
Still, don’t be discouraged — this technique can be used to discover other basemap sources. And if you find reliable, high-quality domestic basemap services, feel free to share them with the community!