Sites you can see over time

Sites you can see over time

How Omniris organizes every flight around the places you fly, and how the Site Navigator lets you walk a site through its flight dates, compare them, measure what changed and share what you found.

Summary

Drone work is about places. You fly the same quarry every month, the same field every week of the season, the same roof before and after a storm. What you want to know is usually not "what does this flight show?" but "what has changed at this place since last time?"

Omniris organizes your work around those places. A site is one place you fly, filed under the customer it belongs to. Two tools work with sites:

• The Site Manager is where you set sites up: their names, boundaries, type, RTK settings and who can see them.
• The Site Navigator is where you look at them: a panel on the map that shows every flight of a site, date by date, and the tools to compare dates, measure, record findings and share what you see.

What a site is

A customer is who the work is for: a farm, a contractor, a utility, your own company. A site is one place you fly for that customer: a field, a pit, a solar plant, a building. A site does not need a customer. The same site name can be used under two different customers, and the two stay separate sites.

Each site has:

Site types

The type is shown under the site's name and can be changed at any time.

The Site Manager

Open the Site Manager from the location-pin icon in the main navigation. It has three levels: your customers, one customer and its sites, and one site. A back arrow returns you to the level above.

Customers

Each customer is a card showing its name, how many sites it has and, for an organization's customer, a badge naming the organization. Sites without a customer are listed in a section of their own. New Customer asks for a name, an optional description and, when you belong to an organization, whether the customer is yours or the organization's. You can also link the customer to the Omniris account of a person at that customer, by email address.

Opening a customer shows its sites, each with its number of polygons, and New Site. You can edit the customer, give it a logo, or delete it.

A site

A site's own screen brings together everything about that place:

• Name, type, description and picture, with Edit and Delete.
• The boundary map, with an address search to find the place, and import and export (next section).
• A Site Navigator panel on the same map, to lay the site's own flights under its boundaries while you draw.
• Show on all maps, to show the boundaries across the rest of Omniris.
• Flight missions: plan a flight for the site with Plan Mission. Omniris generates the flight plan; you fly it in your own drone app.
• RTK settings (see "RTK settings").
• Volume measurements saved on the site, each with a printable report and Open in map, and a spreadsheet (CSV) of them all.
• Legal Hold and Retention, which protect all of the site's imagery at once. The companion paper Evidence you can prove describes holds and retention.
• Zonal Analytics, on agricultural sites. The companion paper Maps you can measure describes it.

Renaming, merging and deleting

• Renaming a customer or a site re-files its imagery under the new name everywhere.
• Merging. Renaming to a name that already exists offers to merge the two. Merging customers moves every site across, and sites with the same name become one. Merging sites joins their boundaries and their flights. Only sites with the same owner can be merged.
• Deleting a customer or site removes it from the Site Manager. Its imagery is never deleted, and stays filed under the same names. Deleting a customer also removes its sites.

Sites created by your flights

You do not have to create a site before you fly it. When a stitch or 3D model job that names a site finishes, the site and customer are created for you if they do not exist yet. Older site names that have no site record are listed as Unmanaged sites (from stitching); Adopt turns one into a full site, and Adopt all does them all at once.

Boundaries

A site's boundaries are polygons: shapes on the map that mark out the site, or the fields, blocks, roofs or areas inside it. Each polygon has a label, an optional description (shown when you hover over it on a map), a colour, and its area in acres.

• Draw with + Draw polygon, then reshape, zoom to or delete each one from its row.
• No Save button. Boundaries save themselves a moment after every change. A status label says Saving…, Saved with the time, or Save failed.
• Import boundaries from KML, KMZ, GeoJSON or a Shapefile, either adding them to the site's polygons or replacing them. A file holding several shapes in one feature is split into one polygon per shape.
• Export the site's polygons as GeoJSON, KML, KMZ (Google Earth) or a Shapefile. A Shapefile cannot carry the custom fields below, and the export says so.
• Maximise the map to fill the screen while you draw.

A polygon is a single outline. Holes in an imported shape are not kept.

Custom fields

Each polygon can carry custom fields: named slots for whatever matters about that field, block or roof, such as its crop, owner, roof type or yield. A field is Text, a whole number (Integer) or a decimal (Floating point), and has one value for the Whole Site or a separate value Per Date, so you can track a number from flight to flight.

To reuse a set of fields, save it as a field set and load it onto other polygons. When the polygon already has fields, you choose whether to skip names that already exist, add everything, or replace what is there. A field set you change later can be pushed to the sites built from it.

You fill in the values on the map: in the Site Navigator, click a polygon to open its data block (see "Layers and basemaps").

How work joins a site

You rarely file anything by hand. Work joins a site in three ways.

Imagery from elsewhere

A national aerial survey, a satellite scene or an older contractor's map can join a site's timeline too. On any map-aligned GeoTIFF in your vault, choose Add to Site as Imagery and give:

• The site.
• The capture date, the day the imagery was taken. It is filled in only from information that really means that: the acquisition date recorded in the file, or a STAC metadata file saved beside it (STAC is an open standard for describing map data). It never uses the date the file was made, because a mosaic made today is not imagery taken today. It cannot be in the future.
• The layer type: RGB for a picture, or one of ten vegetation and water index types for an index map.
• A source, optional, such as "Aerial orthophoto, 2024". It is shown under that date in the Site Navigator and beside it in Compare, so every date says where its imagery came from.

The file itself is not changed or re-projected, so its fingerprint remains the evidence. You need permission to change the file, and the file must already have a map position.

RTK settings

RTK (real-time kinematic) drones correct their GPS positions to within centimetres using corrections from a base station or a correction network. Those positions are only meaningful if you know which reference frame the corrections were in, and the photos do not record it. So each site states it once, on its RTK settings card:

• No defaults. Each setting starts as "Not set", because a guessed frame would put your positions in the wrong place without anyone noticing. A California site with no epoch says so.
• What they are used for. Checking RTK flights against a design model needs the frame and the base; until they are set, those flights are not graded. CAD export uses the frame for the site's flights.
• An autonomous base can be off by several feet (metres) in absolute position, so flights from one count as uncontrolled.
• Who can change them. An organization's managers, for an organization's site; the owner, for a personal site. Everyone else sees the current values, and a note to ask a manager while they are not set.
• One flight different? A single flight can override the site's settings from its stitch job; Use the site's setting removes the override.
• On the record. Every change is recorded in the custody record.

The companion paper From design to measured progress explains how the RTK settings are used when flights are checked against a design.

Who can see and change a site

Every customer and site is owned either by one person or by one organization. The owner is chosen when it is created; a site under a customer takes the customer's owner.

People whose account has the read-only Viewer role do not see the Site Manager. Access to a site comes from the organization; there is no separate member list for each site. To show a site to someone outside, share a Site Navigator view (see "Sharing a view") or share its folders.

Sites on every map

Tick Show on all maps on a site and its boundaries appear across Omniris: on the map of a folder's imagery, in the Site Navigator, on job maps and on shared Site Navigator links. Each polygon is drawn in its own colour, with its name.

A polygon button on the map cycles the boundaries through three states: full (a light fill, outline and name), outlines only, and hidden. Your browser remembers the choice for the next time you open a map.

The map also shows a marker for every site you can see. Click one to open that site in the Site Navigator. A button beside the Site Navigator's button shows or hides the markers.

The Site Navigator

The Site Navigator is a panel on the Omniris map. It shows one site at a time, with every flight of that site laid out by date and layer, and the tools to work with them.

Opening a site

1. Open the Map and click the Site Navigator button (the compass), or click a site's marker on the map.
2. Pick a Customer to narrow the list, or leave it on all customers.
3. Pick a Site. A site name used for two customers is listed once for each, with the customer in brackets, and each shows only that customer's flights.

The map moves to the site and shows its earliest flight, starting with the colour map (RGB) when there is one. The panel stays open while you work on the map; only its × closes it. A smaller version, for picking a site's dates and layers, also appears on the site's screen in the Site Manager.

What the panel holds

The header has the boundary button (full, outlines only, hidden), the share button, and a button that zooms back to the whole site. A line at the foot counts the overlays on the map.

Moving through time

The Dates list shows every flight date of the site, oldest first. Tick a date to put that flight on the map; tick several to stack them. There is no limit on how many dates can be on at once.

• Opacity per date. Each date that is on has a slider from 0 to 100%. Fade a later flight over an earlier one to see what changed.
• Dates and layers combine. What you see is every ticked date in every ticked layer. Two dates and two layers make four overlays. Each overlay's opacity is its date's slider times its layer's slider.
• The map stays put. Turning a date on moves the map only when that flight lies well away from where you are looking. Turning one off never moves it.
• Where it came from. A date added from outside imagery shows its source under the date, so two dates from different sources are never mistaken for one series.

Small buttons on each date open that flight's folder in your vault, open its 3D model when the flight made one (see "3D"), and, for a multispectral flight, show how closely its colour and multispectral maps lined up. A flight that has been cropped to a field or parcel has a cropped button that shows the cropped maps in place of the originals.

Layers and basemaps

The Layers list shows every kind of map the site's flights produced, by its short name, each with its own opacity slider. They fall into these groups:

When a multispectral flight also made a separate colour map, the Site Navigator shows the colour job's elevation models for that date, so one surface model and one terrain model are drawn and they line up with the colour map. Both remain in your vault.

• Photo locations. The pin button in the Layers heading drops a pin where each photo of the dates you have on was taken. Hover over a pin for a thumbnail; click it to open the photo.
• Terrain analysis. On an elevation layer, a button makes contours, slope, aspect, ponding and drainage, and a probe reads values from the slope, aspect and ponding layers.
• Thermal. Temperature maps are drawn in the ironbow thermal palette. On a thermal layer you can click to read temperatures (in °F with °C), draw an area for its temperatures, show isotherms (the areas above, below or between temperatures you set), find hotspots, and make a crop water stress map for corn, soybean, cotton or wheat against the crop's published limits, or for another crop as a relative map, scaled within that flight and labelled so, which is never mixed with the others. A thermal map from a camera whose temperatures have not been validated says so beside the layer. The companion paper Temperatures you can measure covers these tools.

Basemaps

Under the site's layers, the map shows a basemap of your choice: Satellite, Hybrid (satellite with roads and place names, the default), Streets, Light or Dark. The choice is remembered.

The polygon data block

Click one of the site's polygons on the map to open its data block: its name and description, the site's type, its area in acres, its location, and the average height the drone flew above the ground there on the dates you have on. Below that are its custom fields, in two columns: values for the whole site, and values for each date that is on. Type a value to change it, if you can change the site. When zonal analytics has been run on the site, the data block also lists the polygon's average for each crop index on each date. Below that, the site's saved volumes are listed for each date that is on.

Zonal analytics and designs

On an agricultural site, the Zonal Analytics section shades each polygon on the map by a crop index: its average, how even it is, how it compares with the rest of the field, or its trend over the season. The companion paper Maps you can measure describes zonal analytics in full.

Imported design models for the site can be drawn over any flight, coloured by object type; click an object to see its details. The Progress section lists the site's construction schedules. The companion paper From design to measured progress covers both.

Reference layers

A reference layer is a map of things that stay put from one flight to the next: roads, buildings, parcels, pipelines, facilities, points of interest. Drawn over your imagery, it tells you what you are looking at. A reference layer has no date. It sits in its own Reference group in the Site Navigator and draws over whichever dates you are viewing.

Adding one

1. Upload the file to your vault.
2. On the file's menu, choose Add to Site as Reference Layer. You need permission to change the file.
3. Pick the site, check the layer name (it starts as the file name) and pick a colour.

GeoJSON, KML, KMZ, a Shapefile packed in a ZIP, and GML are accepted. Every line, area, hole and point is kept, along with each feature's attributes.

• Never drawn in the wrong place. A file in latitude and longitude works as it is. A file on a projected map grid must say which grid it uses. After converting, Omniris checks that the layer lands on real latitudes and longitudes and inside the area that grid is meant for. A file that fails is refused, with a message naming its grid and where it would have landed.
• Full detail or nothing. A layer can be up to 25 MB, with up to 50,000 features and 2,000,000 points. A larger file is refused rather than simplified; split it by area or by type and add each part.
• The file itself is not changed. The map draws a converted copy, so the original keeps its fingerprint as evidence. An encrypted file stays encrypted; no unencrypted copy is kept.

Using them

Each reference layer is listed with its colour and number of features. All are off when a site opens; tick one to draw it. Lines are drawn in the layer's colour, areas are outlined with a light wash of it, and points are dots. Names are drawn along roads and inside areas. Click a feature to see its attributes. The pencil on a row renames or recolours the layer for everyone who can see the file. Reference layers are not included on shared Site Navigator links.

Dated imagery from elsewhere, such as a national aerial survey or a satellite scene, is added differently: as a date on the site's timeline (see "How work joins a site").

Comparing dates

The Compare section answers the question a site exists for: what changed between two flights? Pick an earlier date (A), a later date (B) and a layer, then choose how to compare:

Each comparison is graded for how well the two surveys line up, because an offset between them looks like change. The results can be printed or saved as a PDF report, or downloaded as a spreadsheet (CSV), and Alert me turns the comparison into a standing watch (see "Change alerts"). Comparing is free. The companion paper Maps you can measure explains the comparison, its grades and its limits in full.

AI change

When both dates' colour maps have been through AI object detection with the same model and the same list of objects, AI change (in the Visual mode) lists the objects that appeared, disappeared or stayed, and draws them on the map in green, red and grey. It lines the two dates up using fixed structures such as buildings and tanks, never vehicles or equipment. It refuses dates whose resolutions differ by more than two times, because the detector finds more at the finer one. Appearances and disappearances are recorded as findings. The comparison itself costs nothing; the detection runs it reads were charged when they ran. The companion paper Findings you can act on covers it.

Measurements and volumes

The Map Tools button on the map measures distance, area, a profile (a cross-section of the ground along a line) and volume (the material above or below a base you choose, inside a boundary you draw), from the site's elevation models. The companion paper Maps you can measure describes each tool, the volume bases and the uncertainty shown with every volume.

Volumes over time

Save a volume measurement on a site and it becomes a standing question: how much material is inside this boundary now? Omniris answers it on every flight of the site, without anyone pressing a button:

• Every flight, past and future. The boundary is measured against the site's existing surveys when you save it, and on each new survey of the site as it arrives.
• Only flights that cover it. A survey counts when it belongs to the site, belongs to the measurement's owner, and covers the whole boundary. A flight that clips only a corner of a stockpile is not used, because its number would look like the pile shrank.
• Only flights that saw it. An automatic result is not recorded when more than 25% of the boundary has no elevation data. You can still evaluate that flight yourself; the result is then flagged.

In the Site Navigator, the Volumes section lists each saved measurement with one line per date that is on: the volume with its plus-or-minus, the tonnage when you gave a material, and a flag when part of the boundary had no data. A date not yet measured offers Evaluate. The chart button shows volume over time; hover over a point for its date and value. The crosshairs zoom the map to the boundary. On the site's screen in the Site Manager, the same measurements have a printable report each and a spreadsheet (CSV) of every result.

Findings on the map

A finding is a recorded issue at a place on the site, with a severity and a stage. The Site Navigator's Findings section lists the site's findings, most severe first, filtered by stage (open, untriaged, active, resolved, dismissed) and severity, and shows them on the map. Click one to go to it and open its full record. New finding here records a new one at a point or over an area you draw. The companion paper Findings you can act on covers findings in full.

3D

When a flight also made a 3D model (a textured mesh or a Gaussian splat), its date in the Site Navigator shows a cube button. Click it to open the model in the 3D viewer; when the flight made more than one, pick which. The companion paper Digital twins you can see and measure describes the 3D viewer and what you can do in it.

Change alerts

A change alert watches a site for you. Set it up once from a comparison, and every time a new flight of the site arrives, Omniris compares it with the flight before and emails you if the change passes the line you set.

Setting one up

Run a Difference comparison on the site, then click Alert me. The alert keeps the comparison's layer and area, and asks what to watch:

• Direction: either direction, only when it rises, or only when it falls.
• Smallest change worth reporting: a minimum area, 100 ft² for elevation and 0.05 acre for an index by default, and for elevation an optional minimum height, so scattered noise is not reported as change.
• Who is told: you, and up to 10 other people with Omniris accounts.
• Findings: optionally, each area that changed becomes a finding automatically.

When it fires

• Alerts are checked every six hours. Each check compares the site's newest flight with the one before it.
• The email links straight back to the comparison in the Site Navigator, and to a page listing the areas that changed.
• Each pair of flights is reported once, and one alert sends at most one email every 12 hours.
• If new flights cannot be measured (they do not cover the area, or the comparison is refused), the alert pauses after a few attempts and emails you why, rather than staying silent.

You need to be able to see the site to set an alert on it. Each person can have up to 25 active alerts, and each site up to 5.

The situation report

A situation report is one PDF that tells the story of a site between two dates, ready to hand to someone who will never open Omniris. In the Site Navigator's Compare section, choose the two dates and a layer of map images in the Visual mode, pick a Language (English or Polish) and click Generate report. When it is ready, Download PDF; it is also saved to your vault, in the later image's folder (or, if you cannot add files there, a Reports folder of your own), with its own custody record.

The report is a plain PDF, so it never prints encrypted imagery: an encrypted image is shown as "Imagery unavailable", and a report is not made when the later image or its folder is encrypted. The companion paper Evidence you can prove describes custody records and certificates.

Sharing a view

A Site Navigator link gives someone without an Omniris account a live, read-only Site Navigator for one site. They open it in a browser; there is nothing to install. Use the share button in the Site Navigator's header, or Public Link on a folder and choose to share it as a Site Navigator view.

What the recipient can do

• Turn the shared dates and layers on and off, with their opacity sliders, over a satellite basemap.
• Measure distances, areas, elevations and volumes, and see the volume measurements you saved on the site. A volume can be reported but not saved.
• Compare two dates, including the difference figures and their report and spreadsheet.
• Read zonal statistics, polygon field values and temperatures (a point, an area, isotherms and the latest hotspots).
• Read findings, when you included them.

Everything else is refused with "Not available on a shared view": saving anything, changing anything, other folders, 3D models, reference layers, photo locations, AI change and the situation report. Encrypted layers are never shared.

Staying in control

• Edit it later. Change the dates, layers and detail from your list of public links. Pages already open pick up the change within half an hour.
• Revoke it. Maps already open stop working within 10 minutes.
• On the record. Creating, changing, revoking and deleting the link, and every download through it, are recorded in the custody record. Each opening is counted, and each map layer a recipient shows is recorded in that layer's custody record as a view (best-effort, like every view).

Orion

Orion, the Omniris assistant, knows what you are looking at. While the Site Navigator is open, Orion is told which site and customer you picked, which dates are on and which layers are shown, so you can ask about "this site" without naming it. It checks that you are allowed to see the site first.

• Ask about the site's flights: which dates it was flown, how jobs went, what they cost.
• Ask for analysis: zones of crop stress for a flight date, a summary of temperatures and hotspots on a thermal flight, or a description of a place on the map.

Orion sees only your own data. It answers in the chat; it does not change your sites or open the Site Navigator for you.

Exports

The companion paper Maps you can measure describes the map downloads and exports.

Desktop and phone

On the phone, a site can be saved for offline use: its design objects and the street map around it are kept on the phone, and progress recorded without a connection is sent when the phone is back online. The satellite map needs a connection. The companion paper From design to measured progress covers progress recording.

Where it runs

The Site Manager and the Site Navigator are part of Omniris in every deployment, and work the same way in each. Comparisons, automatic volume measurements, change alerts and situation reports run on the deployment's own servers.

What it does, and what it doesn't

• A flight joins a site by its name. Stitch and 3D model jobs file their results under the site you name. A misspelt name makes a second site; merge the two to fix it. A GeoTIFF from anywhere else joins a site through Add to Site as Imagery.
• Boundaries are single outlines. Holes in an imported shape are not kept. Maps across Omniris draw up to 500 boundary polygons at a time.
• Colour maps are compared by eye, not by value. Differences in lighting between two flights would swamp real change, so a computed difference takes elevation or index layers only. Thermal maps are compared by eye too.
• A computed difference needs a projected map grid. The later date must be on a projected grid, such as UTM or a state plane, so areas come out in real units. Imagery in plain latitude and longitude can still be compared visually.
• A comparison is only as good as the alignment. Two surveys that do not line up show their offset as change. Each comparison is graded for this; the grade tells you how far to trust it, and never blocks it.
• Automatic volumes are strict about coverage. A flight is measured automatically only when it belongs to the site and the measurement's owner and covers the whole boundary.
• Change alerts look at the newest pair of flights, checked every six hours, and tell you by email.
• A reference layer is checked, not proofread. A file that would land in the wrong place is refused. A file whose coordinates are swapped but still land inside its grid's area cannot be detected, so look at a new layer on the map after adding it.
• Shared links show less. Reference layers, 3D models, photo locations, AI change and the situation report are not on shared links, and encrypted layers are never shared.
• The situation report is a plain PDF. It never prints encrypted imagery, and is not made when the later image is encrypted.
• The Findings list in the Site Navigator shows up to the 200 most severe findings of the site, and says when there are more.

Where it matters

Glossary

Basemap

The background map under your layers: satellite imagery, streets, or a plain light or dark map.

Customer

Who the work is for. Sites are filed under customers.

Data block

The panel that opens when you click a site's polygon in the Site Navigator, showing its details and custom field values.

Elevation model (DSM / DTM)

A map of heights. The surface model (DSM) includes everything on the ground; the terrain model (DTM) is the bare ground.

Finding

A recorded issue at a place on a site, with a severity and a stage.

Flight date

The day a flight's earliest photo was taken; the date its results are filed under.

Layer type

What kind of map a result is: colour, a band, an index, elevation, thermal or terrain analysis.

NDVI and other indices

Numbers worked out from a multispectral camera's bands that track plant health, shown as a colour scale.

Orthomosaic

One map-accurate image stitched from many overlapping drone photos.

Polygon

A shape on the map that marks out a site or an area inside it.

Reference layer

A map of roads, buildings or other features drawn over a site's imagery, not tied to a date.

RTK

Real-time kinematic positioning: GPS corrected to within centimetres by a base station or correction network.

Site

One place you fly, with its boundaries, settings and every flight of it.