FAQ
General
Q. What is the resolution for my City?
A. NearMap’s monthly city PhotoMaps are captured at 3cm, 5cm, 7.5cm, or 10cm resolution, but most are captured at 7.5cm Aerial PhotoMaps provided through traditional technologies usually range between resolutions of 15cm for urban areas to 50cm for remote areas. In comparison with NearMap’s typical urban (7.5cm) and non-urban (10cm) resolutions, this represents an improvement in image quality of 300% and 2400% respectively.
Q. Is all the data on your site yours?
A. No. The PhotoMaps and Terrain data in and around capital cities are ours and covered by our licence agreements. However, there are other types of data that are also of interest that we have available such as the OpenStreetMaps and world satellite PhotoMap which we are very grateful to have and are able to use on our site subject to the copyright and licences of each source. Some of the data is also available as torrents on our website.
Q. Can I download lots of tiles?
A. Yes; if you abide by our licence agreements. However if you download a large amount of data from our servers, we may have to limit your speeds in order to give everyone fair access to the site. Please be considerate of everyone else when you’re thinking of downloading a large amount of data.
Q. Do you have historical data online?
A. Our production of the PhotoMap data started mid 2009; however we have a great deal of historical test PhotoMaps that were created during the prototype process. Please be aware that as we were in test phase before this time and deliberately tested under extreme conditions, there will be an increase of errors in these older PhotoMaps. We wanted to test how well we could capture PhotoMaps in difficult conditions. This was to test different techniques, weather conditions, different camera settings etc. They are not perfect, but we have included them for historical interest and are happy for you to use them and get from them what you can.
Q. When I zoom in very close to a property, the date and PhotoMap displayed changes to an older date. Why is this occurring?
A. Our standard PhotoMaps are 7.5cm resolution, but we sometimes fly at much higher resolution - for example, on the 15th May 2009 we flew the Perth CBD at 3cm. When you zoom right in to the PhotoMap, you will eventually exceed the resolution of the 7.5cm data and you will notice the clarity of the image you are viewing degrade as this occurs. Our site will display higher resolution data (e.g. 5cm resolution) if it is available for that location. As a result, you may end up viewing a higher resolution PhotoMap of the location which may be older than our standard 7.5cm PhotoMap of that location. The easiest way to identify the resolution you are viewing is to check the scale bar at the bottom left of the map window. As long as the map scale is 5 metres or larger (e.g. it shows “5 metres”, “10 metres”, “30 metres” etc), then you are viewing the latest 7.5cm resolution PhotoMap.
Q. Will my use of NearMap’s website choke our broadband?
A. As every customer’s IT infrastructure is different, we are unable to answer this for individual client. However we can say that we have designed the NearMap portal to deliver our PhotoMaps with optimal efficiency and we are constantly finding ways to make it even better. Standard ADSL should be sufficient although slower links (i.e mobile phones and wireless notebooks) work reasonably well.
Our Government Licence offers a valuable workaround if you are concerned about this as it allows licensed users to download tiles for use within their systems. This allows an agency’s users to draw our tiles from their own server, rather than over the Internet. This means tiles can be loaded onto mobile devices, through the use of a tile down loader application, so that they can be used off line in situations where broadband access is not available.
Our portal has been designed to serve many terabytes of information to a multitude of simultaneous users and we have multiple data centres around Australia to efficiently direct web traffic to create an optimal user experience, regardless of where our users are and how they are using our portal. Should a situation ever arise in which large scale public use of the site, coupled with high use from our Paid Government Licence customers, caused us to have to restrict access speeds, our policy is to ensure that the access speed of our Government Licence holders would be the last to be restricted.
Q. Can I get access to raw photos and camera data so I can create 3D views?
A. In the longer term as we expose more of our 3D capabilities, we will make source data more available so that you can research and create interesting 3D images. This will be released in the near future once we are satisfied with our system outputs.
Q. How do I get the latitude and longtitude (lat/long) of a specific location?
A. Follow these steps to get the lat/long:
- Position the mouse pointer at the map location you want the lat/long for
- Right-click to display the context menu
- Select "Lat / Long" from the context menu
Q. How do I measure distances on the maps?
A. Go to the measurement tool help for the steps.
Q. Can I use Google Map’s map objects?
A. No. The reason for this is that some people believe that Google’s service licence agreement gives Google rights to use anything that is displayed through their map object for web browsers. However, you can use NearMap’s own map objects for web browsers, which has a similar API to Google’s map objects.
PhotoMap Q&A
Q. How can I use the PhotoMaps?
A. You can use them at least three ways – view the maps online from our website, use a standard URL syntax to get individual tiles or embed our map objects in your own pages using other widely available applications.
Q. What is the age of the PhotoMaps?
A. We try to update city PhotoMaps every month. You can use our unique TimeView feature to scroll through our monthly updates to see how the natural and built environment changes over time.
Q. How long have you been capturing these PhotoMaps for?
A. We have captured PhotoMaps of Perth since November 2007. You can scroll back and forth between dates on which we have flown surveys using TimeView. The most current survey we have captured will be the default map shown whenever you connect to the map page, so make sure you revisit the site regularly to view the latest PhotoMap!
Q. Can I compare two PhotoMaps at the same time?
A. One option is to open two separate windows, re-size them and place them side by side. We currently don’t have this capability set up for the map page, but we hope to in the near future. Our immediate aim is to give you what we have now and then improve these useability features in the future.
Q. How do I find out whether NearMap has flown a new PhotoMap area and updated the site?
A. You can follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook page or join us at the forum to keep up to date with our flight and publishing schedules. Please know that we can’t guarantee flight times as this depends on factors that are out of our control. like weather conditions and permissions from Air Traffic Control authorities.
Q. Can you ensure shadowing is similar from month to month?
A. Some shadowing is obviously unavoidable and since PhotoMaps cannot be captured at night, shadows a natural by-product. In the majority of locations however, the height of buildings and trees is not enough for this to become a problem.
In most CBD areas, building heights can create large shadows at certain times of the day, but weather and air traffic control conditions make it impossible to fly at exactly the same time, every time.
NearMap minimises the impact of shadowing on our users’ experience in several way;
- Scheduling our capture flights during the middle of the day when shadowing is less of an issue,
- Using our automated colour balancing process (part of our HyperVision processing solution) to improve the visibility of features in shadowed areas,
- Using our TimeView capability to provide several months of PhotoMaps for every location - if features are shadowed one month you will probably find better results in another month.
Q. How can we be sure the system will be reliable for use?
A. With multiple data centres, the NearMap system is constructed with high redundancy. What this means is that there are lots of network routes for our users to receive PhotoMap data through their broadband and that the terabytes of data we store and serve is backed up in multiple locations, so our web portal has minimum downtime. You can reach our tech support from the site.
Q. I tried the system at home and saw something weird on the PhotoMap - what’s that about?
A. Like other aerial photography systems, NearMap PhotoMaps occasionally display quirks/imperfections. Our automated processing of raw images into a seamless PhotoMap is part of what enables the very low cost of a NearMap licence. It also means we don’t manually edit the PhotoMap as this would massively increase the cost. If you find a quirk anywhere on our PhotoMaps, just check PhotoMaps from other dates using TimeView – our monthly updates mean that imperfections are updated too.
Please visit our PhotoMap Quirks page to discover why there are sometimes some minor faults in our PhotoMaps and what you can do to get the best out of our maps.
Q. Do you have enough support staff if we have problems?
A. Yes. NearMap has a very clever engineering team to provide support; you can access technical support from the site via email. In addition, if you are integrating the NearMap PhotoMaps into other business applications via our API (Application Programming Interface), there are plenty of GIS vendors and systems integrators familiar with our solution and available to support you. Our integration notes lists our integration partners and describes their capabilities.
Q: Are NearMap’s PhotoMaps accurately georeferenced?
A: Yes. The technical term for our PhotoMaps is that they are mosaics of orthorectified images. This means that each raw photo that goes into making up our PhotoMaps has had the full orthorectification process applied, including removal of terrain distortions, lens distortions and so on. Individual orthoimages are then merged together into a mosaic, being the PhotoMaps that you see on our map portal. We generate high resolution bare-earth terrain maps as a necessary part of the orthorectification process (so that terrain distortions can be removed). As an aside, we also use the raw terrain surface (not bare earth) data to generate our color shaded Terrain maps. The Terrain maps have comparable accuracy and resolution to LIDAR generated terrain data.
The bundle adjustment stage of our HyperVision supercomputer based photogrammetry processing system performs full interior and exterior orientation of cameras and photos, including self calibration of cameras. Self calibration is the most accurate form of computing the metric camera interior orientation and lens parameters. A unique feature of our HyperPod aerial camera system is that it captures many more photos observing a given point on the ground (e.g. very high photo redundancy) compared to older aerial camera systems. This enables our processing system to handling difficult situations such as cloud and smoke, and has also means it has a far lower blunder rate than older orthophoto solutions. Our HyperVision processing is fully automated, and designed to create PhotoMaps anywhere in the world, without requiring any ground control point data at all. This also allows us to capture accurate PhotoMaps in adverse conditions where ground point data is not available, is obscured, has moved or is inaccurate. Our orthophoto bundle adjustment precision is typically better than 50cm RMS error. Note that some older PhotoMaps flown prior to November 2009 were prototype and tests surveys, and don’t have the same level of accuracy. The RMS precision will continue to improve over time, as we move towards releasing full 3D capabilities.
To take advantage of NearMap’s accurate PhotoMap georeferencing, you need to ensure that all aspects of map projection and datum transformations are handled by your GIS or CAD system when it merges different sources of data. For example, NearMap uses Datum Epochs ranging from 2009.0 through to 2010.0. Many systems do not take epochs into account correctly or at all when performing map projection conversions, and assume an older epoch such as 1994.0. As Australia has fairly rapid continental drift in the order of 7cm per year, failure to take the epoch into account during datum conversions can result in an error of 1 meter or more, simply due to incorrect datum transformations. So to ensure accurate georerencing of NearMap’s PhotoMaps, it is vital that your processing systems correctly take datum and projection and epoch transformations correctly into account.
StreetMap Q&A
Q. Sometimes the Find function doesn’t find the exact address?
A. We use OpenStreetMap (OSM) as our street map layer. OSM is an open source project that provides free access to user-generated geographic data including street maps. If the street address detail is in the OSM database, our Find function will find it.
OSM is an open platform – you can add to it yourself and improve the system for everyone. Our site shows you how: simply connect to the OpenStreetMap website and follow their simple instructions. We would encourage you to become a contributor to OpenStreetMap - it is an incredible resource that enables collaborative improvement to street map data.
Q. Other sites offer the service of finding directions. Can I do this on NearMap’s site also?
A. We don't offer this capability as yet but we hope to in the future. Our aim is to give you what we have now and continue to enhance the site with additional features. You can add to the Wish List if you have any interesting new ideas and send us your suggestions and feedback on existing features.
Q. How do I update the StreetMaps?
A. The street data NearMap uses on its map is part of the OpenStreetMap data set.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a global, community-created street map that anyone can add to or edit the areas they know to be incorrect. This means you can edit the street you mentioned and also ones that don’t look quite right, you can even add streets that aren’t yet included on the map.
Anyone can add features and points of interest to OSM, like restaurants, bus stops, parks and shops, to make the map more accurately and usefully reflect the environment you live in.
We encourage you to become a contributor to OpenStreetMap - it is an incredible resource that enables collaborative improvement to street map data. You can create an OpenStreetMap (OSM) account or login to OSM and start editing now.
Q. The name of the street is wrong. What should I do?
A. You can correct the street name by editing the StreetMap. See also, How do I update the StreetMaps?
Q. The street or location is missing but I know it’s there. How can I correct this?
A. You can add in the missing street or location by editing the StreetMap. See also, How do I update the StreetMaps?
Terrain Q&A
Q. Can I access the raw terrain data?
A. The rendered jpegs based on raw terrain data are available as tiles. The raw terrain data will later be made available as a torrent along with our other data. Please see the download page for information on how to download our terrain tiles.
Licence Terms Q&A
Q. Are the answers provided here considered legally binding?
A. This page contains some frequently asked questions about the NearMap licenses applicable to Community (Personal), Commercial and Government use. These answers are for informative purposes only, and do not in any way constitute a legally binding document. Please read our licenses before using our website. It will make our lawyers happy :)
Q. What licence do I need to use the PhotoMaps and this website?
A. Use of NearMap’s website and PhotoMaps is governed by our licence terms. Different licence terms apply depending on your use. Please refer to the licensing information for more details.
Q. Who does the Government Licence apply to?
A. Any government entity (national, state or local) MUST purchase a licence to use our PhotoMaps. If you, as a government entity, do not hold a current licence, you do not have permission to use our PhotoMaps. For more information, please read our Paid Government Licence.
You should be aware that all access to our PhotoMaps is logged and government users can be identified through their IP addresses. This includes all access from government domains even for personal use.
Q. Can I negotiate a different set of licensing terms?
A. To keep the costs down for all of our users, we have developed a standard set of licensing terms based on best practice in the industry.
These terms apply to all users, which simplifies the process for everyone and reduces costs (especially legal) and time to purchase and obtain the benefits of the system.
In relation to more specific licensing concerns, please read the other FAQ’s for the relevant response on the issues.
If you do not commit to our licensing terms or, in the case of a government agency you do not have a current Paid Government Licence, you must not use our PhotoMaps at all.
Community Q&A
Q. What is a Community (Personal) Licence?
A. Our Community Licence, which is free, applies to individuals who use our PhotoMaps for their own personal, non-commercial purposes.
You can use our web site or PhotoMaps to derive information (e.g. StreetMap data) under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA) licence. This enables everyone in the community to share the benefit of information generated from the use of our site. For more information, please read our Community (Personal) Licence.
Q. Can I download photo tiles for my own use?
A. Yes. You can use all tiles for personal use under the terms of our Community (Personal) Licence.
Commercial Q&A
Q. Who do the Commercial Licences apply to?
A. The Commercial licenses are applicable to Commercial (and non-government) entities.
However, you may have to pay for a commercial licence if your company competes with us, uses our PhotoMaps in a material way or intends to use a large amount of our PhotoMaps.For more information, please refer to our Free Commercial Licence and Paid Commercial Licence.
If you’ve read our licences and have questions or don’t know whether you need to purchase a commercial licence or not, please contact us.
Q. Does the Free Commercial Licence apply to me?
A. The Free Commercial Licence applies to you if:
- you are not a heavy user of our PhotoMaps, and
- your business does not compete with NearMap’s business, and
- you are not using our PhotoMaps in a way that is material to your business.
You may have to pay for a commercial licence if your company competes with us, uses our PhotoMaps in a material way or intends to use a large amount of our PhotoMaps.For more information, please refer to our Free Commercial Licence and Paid Commercial Licence.
If you’ve read our licences and have questions or don’t know whether you need to purchase a commercial licence or not, please contact us.
Q. How do I know if the Paid Commercial Licence apply to me?
A. If the Free Commercial Licence does not apply to your, you should apply for a Paid Commercial Licence; if you are not sure which commercial licence applies to you, please contact us.
Q. What does “competing with NearMap" mean?
A. You are probably competing with us if you:
- distribute our PhotoMaps to government entities or to commercial organisations; or
- use maps to generate revenue from advertising.
If you are unsure whether these criteria apply to you, please contact us.
Q. What does “using PhotoMaps in a material way" mean?
A. "Material" means revenue stream is affected if you stop using our PhotoMaps. In other words, using PhotoMaps in a way that is central or significant to the operation or quality of your business. For example, if you are an online real estate company with a website using our PhotoMaps, we view this as using them in a material way.
If you are unsure whether these criteria apply to you, please contact us.
Q. What is a “large amount" of PhotoMaps?
A. More than 100,000 tiles per month. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a PhotoMap tile, this is a large number of tiles and for most users; this limit will be far in excess of your ordinary activities.
If you are unsure whether these criteria apply to you, please contact us.
Government Q&A
Q. Can we keep copies of PhotoMaps we made while we had a licence?
A: Prior to April 2010, clients could only use our PhotoMaps while holding a current valid licence, and extracted subsets of PhotoMaps could only be kept as part of other records to meet government archival requirements.
Clients can now retain and continue to use any copies of PhotoMaps within the Area applicable to their licence made during the licence period.
In other words, clients can now keep and continue to use PhotoMaps, even if their licence lapses in future years.
This only applies to copies of PhotoMaps that were made during the licence period. So this right does not extend to new PhotoMaps that were issued after a licence has lapsed, and does not entitle you to keep using our online services after a licence has lapsed. This right is also only available after a client has actually paid for the licence. This means that if you evaluate NearMap’s PhotoMaps and do not proceed with a licence, then you must certify that all copies of PhotoMaps made during the evaluation have been deleted.
Q. When does our 12 month licence start from?
A: The licence runs for 12 months from the date we accept your application.
Prior to April 2010, the licence ran for a calendar year, regardless of when a client took out a licence. Licences for existing clients will be updated to reflect this change, so existing clients will have licences extended to 12 months from their Purchase Date rather than from the start of the calendar year.
Q. Can we evaluate NearMap’s PhotoMaps?
A. Yes, you can.
To evaluate, Government clients must issue a Purchase Order to licence NearMap PhotoMaps. From the Purchase Order date,you then have a 45 day evaluation period before payment of our invoice is required. If you do not pay within those 45 days, NearMap will consider your order cancelled and you will no longer be able to access our PhotoMaps. You must certify in writing that any copies of NearMap PhotoMaps accessed during the evaluation period have been deleted.
Evaluation includes full access to PhotoMaps for the Area covered by the licence, and includes access to the HyperWMS server, HyperTiles download program and access to PhotoMaps via NearMap’s web portal.
Q. I am a statutory body, not an affiliate of the government. Do I still have to purchase a Government Licence?
A. Yes. Any entity controlled by the government must purchase a Government Licence. You can review the terms of our Paid Government Licence or download it as a .pdf here.
Q. Another government agency in our portfolio has a licence. Can we use this too?
A. No. Each separate government entity in the portfolio must purchase a Government Licence if it wants to view our PhotoMaps.
Q. What kind of metadata is available?
A. NearMap provides the PhotoMap creation dates as metadata. If you are interested our metadata to ensure NearMap PhotoMaps can be integrated with your existing GIS assets, we are currently aware of at least four companies and multiple open source groups that are working to make utilities that do just that. Examples of integrated functionality will become available from early 2010 through GIS vendors that will include support for NearMap PhotoMaps. Integration is fairly straightforward and we can refer you to a range of high profile vendors that are familiar with our output and how to integrate it into many of the more widely used GIS systems.
Q. Does it integrate with my GIS? (Geographic Information System)
A. Once you have a current licence, every employee of your agency is able to access to NearMap’s web portal and begin to use any of the PhotoMaps and Terrain maps we have for the Licensed Area. You can use our PhotoMap and Terrain maps in multiple ways, including online via our web site, integrated into your own map and GIS applications, or by downloading tiles and using them offline (for example for use on mobile devices in the field).
See NearMap’s Integration Guide for detailed information on ways to integrate our PhotoMaps into your organisation’s business systems.
Q. Can we see a demonstration of the integration with NearMap with particular GIS software?
A. Leading GIS vendors and system integrators, as well as multiple open source groups, are working to support NearMap PhotoMaps. By working with these partners, and not competing with them, NearMap is encouraging the development of a rich set of integration and value added tools. You may want to directly contact your GIS vendor to ask the status of their integration with NearMap PhotoMaps.
In the meantime, licensed users can begin to get value immediately by using the familiar browser-based interface on our website.
Q. Does NearMap provide imagery in formats such as ECW?
A. NearMap’s PhotoMaps are provided using our Tile Map Server protocol in .jpg format. The Tile Map Server protocol is the same standard used by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others. As we are a media company, providing alternative formats is not part of our business model. We are aware of many available tile server applications that can help you download our tiles and many of these enable you to convert our jpg tiles to other formats (like ECW). These are listed on our forum.
Q. Why doesn’t NearMap guarantee monthly updates?
A. We all understand the immense value that seeing change over time gives you - this has never been available before because the costs would have been unthinkable. One of NearMap’s unique values is we provide regular updates and we keep all PhotoMaps online for you to use.
We have every intention of flying city-wide PhotoMaps every month and our record to date speaks for itself in that regard. However we cannot anticipate favourable weather (and particularly cloud) conditions and/or clearance by Air Traffic Control authorities, so we are not able to commit to a specific schedule.
By virtue of our innovative technology, we typically require less than ten hours flying time to complete a city-wide PhotoMap, so we don’t need much of a window to operate.
Q. If I subscribe for a year do I continue to get access in future years?
A: No. You do however get to keep and continue to use copies of PhotoMaps that you made while you had a valid and current agreement for the Area covered by your licence agreement.
Q. What is your “Derived Work” definition for Governments?
A. The licence gives you the right to use, copy or modify the PhotoMaps that your organisation is licensed to access, including the ability to use the PhotoMaps to create Derived Works.
To make it clear for our customers, we have defined what we mean by a Derived Work as “...any copyright work in which you include information derived from observing the Licensed PhotoMaps or Modified PhotoMaps, such as the existence or location of geographical features.”
Q. How often do you update the PhotoMaps?
A. We typically update our city PhotoMaps each month, depending on Air Traffic Control and weather restrictions. We may choose to update more often if we want to capture PhotoMaps of a special event. Our long term goal is to update our city PhotoMaps every week.
Q. What is your pricing model like?
A. Please refer to the Government Licence Fees table.
Q. Do you offer a Service Level Agreement?
A. In short, no. We have deliberately aimed to make our service as affordable as possible for our government clients and we know from our experience in this industry that developing SLAs adds substantially to the cost of licenses. In providing a service to our government clients, our primary objectives are to keep costs as low as possible and maintain a simple approach throughout. Therefore we have chosen not to develop a SLA, so that our licence costs are kept to a minimum.
We can assure you that NearMap’s HyperWeb content distribution system has high levels of redundancy built in. It draws on multiple data centres around Australia and is designed to cope with very high traffic. This means that licensed users of our web portal experience minimal downtime.
If you have concerns about service availability, you should note that our Government Licence allows agencies to download tiles to their server to ensure 100% availability. See our licence terms for details.
Q. What if I’d like to license your PhotoMaps but NearMap does not yet cover my region?
A: Due to NearMap’s expanding coverage, with many PhotoMaps available outside city areas, clients can now take licences for locations outside city areas. If the area is not already covered, NearMap will capture the area. There is a standard pricing model for obtaining PhotoMaps outside city areas. Please contact NearMap for details.
Q. Can you give me some tips in building a business case for my agency or local government authority to purchase a licence?
A. We understand securing these funds can be challenging for some agencies and local governments, even when the value proposition is so powerful.
Our discussions with local governments have demonstrated that there is significant potential for their investment in NearMap to drive revenue growth, particularly through improved compliance monitoring, infrastructure management, customer service and many other activities. NearMap is confident that your first year of use of the PhotoMaps would give you numerous examples of new efficiencies, boosted revenues (particularly from more effective compliance monitoring) and more responsive customer service that could be used to justify continuation of the Licence.
We expect that these benefits could typically add value to government staff working in diverse fields such as:
- Asset Managers
- GIS department
- Property Managers
- Safety and Risk Officers
- Contract Officers
- Information Services
- Waste Supervisors
- Building Maintenance
- Community Development Officers
- Surveyors
- Industry Development Officers
- Rangers and Fire Risk Personnel
- Environmental Health Officers
- Compliance Officers
- Strategic Planners
- Quality Assurance roles
- Information Services Managers
- Road Maintenance and Planning Personnel