diff --git a/content/docs/processes/field_imagery.md b/content/docs/processes/field_imagery.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f29aa50 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/docs/processes/field_imagery.md @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +--- +title: Field Imagery +weight: 4 +--- + +### The Mission +Commercial street-level imagery is often locked behind restrictive licenses, proprietary viewers, and paywalls, making it inaccessible for researchers, urban planners, and the general public. We are building a sovereign, open-source alternative for Canada. + +By self-hosting a **[Panoramax](https://panoramax.fr/)** instance, we provide a decentralized platform where field imagery is treated as a public utility: fully downloadable, API-accessible, and privacy-compliant. + +--- + +### The Infrastructure +Our field imagery pipeline is built on the **Panoramax** ecosystem, a federated open-source alternative to Google Street View. Instead of relying on centralized corporate servers, we operate a sovereign instance that guarantees data permanence and open access. + +* **Platform**: Self-hosted Panoramax instance running on our internal infrastructure. +* **Storage**: High-performance object storage backend for hosting terabytes of 360° and flat field imagery. +* **Federation**: Our instance connects to the global Panoramax federation, ensuring that while the data is hosted in Canada, it is discoverable worldwide through the global `panoramax.xyz` catalog. + +--- + +### The Processing Pipeline +We treat field imagery as a data engineering challenge, ensuring "time-to-insight" is minimized for downstream users. + +1. **Ingestion**: Raw imagery is captured using diverse hardware (ex. 360° cameras, mobile rigs, meta glasses, etc.) and ingested by our systems. +2. **Privacy & Anonymization**: Before publication, all imagery undergoes a rigorous privacy scrub. We utilize automated detection pipelines to blur faces and license plates, ensuring compliance with Canadian privacy standards while maintaining data utility. +3. **Standardization**: Images are processed into standardized, web-optimized tiles for the viewer and high-resolution archives for analysis. +4. **Metadata Extraction**: We extract and normalize/strip EXIF and GPS telemetry, indexing it into a **STAC (SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog)** compliant API. + +--- + +### Data Products +Unlike commercial platforms that only offer a "view" of the data, we provide the **data itself**. + +* **API Access**: Full programmatic access via the Panoramax REST API for querying imagery by location, date, or sequence. +* **Bulk Datasets**: Curated dumps of street-level imagery available for computer vision training, asset management, and change detection models. +* **STAC Integration**: Seamless integration with geospatial workflows (ex. DuckDB, QGIS, Python, R, etc.) using the STAC standard. +`