Aerial imagery in HawkEye

There are many reasons we use this imagery, but the primary objective we have is to provide accurate information for precision agricultural use. With Land Information New Zealand [LINZ] and the regional councils working together to fly the country at various timeframes, this base layer is updated when new imagery is made available publicly.

From our own investigations we believe, there is still too much horizontal inaccuracy in satellite imagery products for us to switch to a new provider. The imagery used in HawkEye has a horizontal error of 70 centimetres or less, whereas many satellite providers can have a horizontal error of 20 metres or even more in some cases in rural areas. If we think about precision agriculture and things that matter such as waterway exclusions for spreading and spraying products, accurate nutrient placement and reporting etc, we believe that using data that may be in error of 20 metres is not acceptable.

At HawkEye we also offer a service of uploading your own imagery for your farm should you have had it flown by aircraft or drone/UAV and it is already orthorectified. This will ensure you have the most recent imagery available for you to view your farm within HawkEye. Of course, over time the underlying base layer may become more recent than that provided by you, so we can then remove what you provided to once again show the most recent imagery for your farm.

Links of interest

• Imagery available creative commons attribution
• National imagery coordination
• Imagery acquisition register

Please note – this article is for New Zealand users only