FAQ

Account

You can create a personal or business account. To create an account, please follow the instructions from the article Sign up.

How do I delete my account?

To delete your account, please follow the instructions from the article Account information.

An UP42 credit is the monetary unit used to price the use of data and services available on our platform (data and processing blocks, tasking and archive datasets, infrastructure costs, etc.). 1 UP42 credit is equivalent to 1 Euro or US dollar cent, and 100 UP42 credits are equivalent to 1 Euro or US dollar. For more information: Credits.

Developers

Is there a way to get notified when a running job changes or when my data orders are ready?

Yes, our platform provides webhooks. Webhooks can be used to alert developers whenever a running job changes the status or a data order is successfully fulfilled. For more information, please visit the article Webhooks.

Do you have any API as an alternative for the console interface?

At UP42 it is not only possible to carry out work directly on the console interface. For users with advanced programming skills, UP42 provides the API and Python SDK, which help you automate processes and scale your business.

Restrictions

Is the access to data and analytics completely unrestricted?

UP42 aims to democratize access to geospatial information. Most of the free and commercial data and analytics are accessible to every user who is compliant with the UP42 platform terms and conditions. However, restrictions apply to certain categories of data and analytics. For more information: Restrictions.

Do you have a compliance process?

Yes, we have a compliance process. For more information: Verification and compliance.

How can I get access to a restricted data block?

Before requesting access to restricted blocks, please make sure that your account details have been verified. For more information: Verification and compliance.

EULA

What is the End User License Agreement (EULA)?

The End User License Agreement (EULA) is a legal contract between a data provider and the user of the data product. It specifies in detail the rights and restrictions which apply to the product. EULAs are usually composed of:

Copyright notice,
Definitions,
Limited warranty,
Restrictions on use,
The granting of a license.

Some EULAs also provide detailed lists of what may and may not be done with the data product and derivative form. UP42 requires that our customers read each EULA before agreeing with it. EULAs can be found on the marketplace.

Block

What is a custom block?

Within our platform, it is possible to develop your own solutions, either for data provisioning (if you are a data provider) or data processing (if you are developing an algorithm). These solutions are pushed to our platform as custom blocks. A block is a workflow unit that acts as an operator for data retrieval (data blocks) or processing algorithms (processing blocks).

Before you start developing a custom block, please make sure you meet all the necessary custom block requirements and check the following information:

What is the difference between streaming and download data?

The streaming data blocks can only be processed on the UP42 platform. You are not able to download the original dataset, but you can download the derived results after applying analytics, provided that the pixel values are not the same as the original dataset.

For example, users cannot download the outputs from the processing block Raster Tiling and Raster CRS Conversion. However, users can download the outputs from the processing blocks K-means Clustering and Raster Zonal Statistics. For more information: Download and streaming Data.

Workflow

How can I create a workflow in UP42?

To create a workflow, add data and processing blocks, we recommend following the instructions from the tutorials below:

Can I process my datasets from storage?

Yes, datasets delivered to storage can be further processed on the UP42 platform. For more information: Process datasets from storage.

I have a problem with an image or a job. How can I ask for help?

Contact support and include the following information to speed up the process:

If there's a problem with an image, include the asset ID.
If there's a problem with a job, send us the job ID.

Why do some data blocks not show up in a workflow search?

Only images that take up to 10 minutes to process will show up in a workflow search.

To be able to add the images that take up to 24 hours to process to your workflow, follow these steps:

Go to Catalog and purchase an image.
When it appears in Storage, click the icon on the right to copy the asset ID.
Go to your workflow. Select Processing from Storage as a data block and add the required processing block. Click Save and configure job.
Paste the asset ID, e.g., "asset_ids": ["123456ab-789c-1011-def1-213gh14ij14"] and run the job.

For more information, see Processing from Storage.

Job

How do I configure the job parameters?

First of all, it is necessary to be familiar with the JSON syntax and the name/value pairs. Before you start with the job configuration, please check out the example values from the article JSON parameters and verify the requirements for each data/processing block. After adjusting the job parameter values, the estimated credit consumption of your job run is triggered before running the job. For more information: Configure job.

What is a job ID?

A job is a unique instance of a pre-configured workflow that delivers the outputs. A universally unique identifier (UUID) is generated after running a job (live job or test query). This UUID (also called job ID) is very useful for troubleshooting job failures or viewing the generated outputs. To find the job ID, please go to Run job.

Visualization

What is the difference between analytic and display types of images?

TripleSat datasets

Images from TripleSat are only delivered in analytic configuration. They differ in bit depths, 8 or 16 bits. These images aren't orthorectified or atmospherically corrected.

TripleSat analytic images are:

Georectified — put into the WGS84 coordinate system.
Radiometrically corrected — went through a basic preprocessing technique to eliminate radiometric problems, such as stripe noise.
Sensor corrected — sensor noise, modifications, and lens distortion are removed from them.

Geolocation accuracy specification for analytic TripleSat images is <20 m (CE90) at nadir — it suggests a 90% probability that the identified feature is within a 20-meter radius of where it's in the image.

If you order a TripleSat analytic image, you'll receive 2 files:

A 4-band multispectral image that includes RGB and NIR bands.
A panchromatic image that combines all three RGB bands to get a better spatial resolution.

Pléiades Neo, Pléiades, and SPOT 6/7 datasets

Images in these datasets are orthorectified, which means sensor motion and terrain distortions are removed from them. Both analytic and display images are corrected for systematic atmospheric effects — for example, bluish effects — but display images also have a true color curve applied to optimize the visual quality of an image.

Analytic images have a more stable contrast and can be used to extract physical properties, such as radiance or reflectance — for example, in vegetation health monitoring. Also, they're more suitable for time series analysis. Display images look better visually and can be used to extract features — for example, in car detection or infrastructure monitoring.

If you order an analytic image, you'll receive 2 files:

A 4-band multispectral image that includes RGB and NIR bands.
A panchromatic image that combines all three RGB bands to get a better spatial resolution.

In a display image, panchromatic and multispectral images are combined into one.

Characteristic	Analytic	Display
Bit depth for a GeoTIFF/JPEG 2000 file	16 bits/12 bits	8 bits for both
Bands combination	2 files: panchromatic and 4-band multispectral	1 file: 4-band pansharpened
Radiometric correction	For systematic atmospheric effects	A true color curve applied on top of atmospheric correction

How can I view the images?

Currently, UP42 does not support the direct visualization of geospatial outputs. To render geospatial data and analytics, you need to install a third-party GIS software. For more information: Visualization in QGIS.

Why is my image blurry?

Your multiple-band raster is rendered with the RGB renderer in a GIS software and the alpha band is turned on. This alpha band is a transparency mask that provides a transparency value for each pixel. If you render the raster in QGIS, you can turn the alpha band off by going to Layer Properties and setting the transparency band to None in the tab Transparency.

Why is the spatial resolution of my Pléiades/SPOT 6/7 image lower than expected?

Geospatial data producers frequently provide low-resolution multiband images and higher-resolution panchromatic images of the same scene. Remote sensing datasets are usually delivered as more raster bands with various pixel sizes.

For Pléiades and SPOT 6/7, each dataset contains a bundle that consists of the individual spectral bands with coarser resolution (2 m for Pléiades and 6 m for SPOT 6/7) and the panchromatic band with the higher resolution (0.5 m for Pléiades and 1.5 m for SPOT 6/7).

Pansharpening is a remote sensing algorithm that uses the higher-resolution panchromatic image to fuse with the lower-resolution multiband image. This outputs a multiband image with the spatial resolution of the panchromatic image (from 2 to 0.5 m for Pléiades and from 6 to 1.5 m for SPOT 6/7).

For more information: Pansharpen images.

My image does not look very good, what could be the problem?

UP42 distributes various geospatial data sources and the quality of the geospatial datasets (satellite, aerial and balloon images) is the responsibility of the upstream data providers.

Generally, images captured by spaceborne platforms or aircraft sensors are prone to various types of noise. For instance, noise may be added to satellite images due to atmospheric noise (e.g. aerosols, clouds) or sensor noise (e.g. angle at which the satellite views the ground at any given time). The image generation process can also add noise to the data, because these datasets have to be compressed to reduce their requirements for archiving and data transmission. Another example is salt and pepper noise, which is generated from errors in data transmission and it can affect the quality of the satellite images.

There is no exact method to correct image artifacts, but we recommend using the standard pre-processing methods (atmospheric, radiometric and geometric corrections) and the traditional digital image processing algorithms. There are several methods which can help clean the images from noise, but you should be familiar with the basic concepts. For example, image filtering can enhance the image properties and remove noise. The following filters are the most widely used in digital image processing:

a. Linear spatial filters (average, disk, gaussian, laplacian, log, motion, Prewitt, Sobel, unsharp).

b. Nonlinear filtering (median filters).

c. Fourier Transform.

Why are my Pléiades/SPOT 6/7 images rotated 90° counterclockwise?

This issue is expected if you are rendering the JPEG 2000 image file (.JP2) in a GIS software. We recommend opening the XML file (.DIM) instead. This file can be found in the image subfolders of the product folder (conventionally named IMG_PHR*/SPOT*_MS_0XX and IMG_PHR*/SPOT*_P_0XX). For more information about the image format: DIMAP V2.

in the catalog
through a workflow