FAQs

AutoMap is a complex workflow reduced to a simple user interface that produces maps based on freely available satellite images. We take care of downloading, processing and merging terabytes of data and classify what matters to you. AutoMap is a product of the Swiss ExoLabs GmbH, a spin-off from the University of Zurich. We are scientists and remote sensing experts.

Changes in environmental conditions affect most of the world's population. Accordingly, not only policymakers but also industry needs to adapt to these changes and needs to develop strategies to monitor environmental processes. For this it is essential to know where on earth changes occur, what kind of changes happened and to what extent the changes took place. AutoMap provides a unique solution for insurance companies, financial institutions, commodity traders, tourism industries, energy companies and scientific institutions.

Obviously it depends on your input parameters. A big area of interest and a long time interval will increase the number of individual images to process. When classifying, every single pixel needs to go through the classification pipeline. In general, this is not an on-demand application.

To give you one isolated example:
Area: ~ 3000 km2
Time interval: 2 Months
Satellites: All = 2578 (196 scenes)
Mode: Default classification
Runtime: ~ 1 hour
Cost: ~ 1.50 $

For every run and machine we create an individual alert system that notifies us about run-time problems. In the rare occasion of a frozen code, the team will reach out to you and take care of a fast solution. In case of a real crash you will be notified per mail as is the case for successfully finished runs, so while the monitoring system tells you that the code is still running and nobody reached out to you, the code is actually still running. The whole workflow is complex and time-intensive, even on optimized cloud machines.

First of all, sorry for the inconvenience! In case of a runtime-crash the team will be notified as well by default. We take those things very seriously since it means we are not as brilliant as we thought we were! The email with which you were notified contains the last log message that maybe helps identify the problem right away. The full log file in the download container should reveal everything. If nobody reaches out to you because we concluded an obvious mistake from your side but you're still unsure, don't hesitate to contact us.

Cloud solutions are very cost efficient but still not free. Considering that results are multiple gigabytes big, the 48 hour policy helps us to reduce costs for you and us!

The output you receive is a link to a zip-file on an Amazon AWS S3 bucket that is valid for 48 hours. If you download and decompress the folder, it contains all your results:

We offer a free and a premium pricing model. For all registered users a limited pool of machines is made available for free use. When this pool is occupied your job will not be submitted. For the premium model, the approach is simple. When started, we record the current hourly run-time cost of the launched cloud machine. Considering expenses for storage and transfer and adding our win margin, we simply double that price.

At this moment, the unit price is 1.5776 $ per hour and job.

If you would like to become a premium user, please contact us!

No! We will not charge you for failed runs. A run is considered to have failed when the database records a negative status.

Don't hesitate to contact us via Email.

Don't hesitate to contact us via Email.