Spatial Research: eight connected map tools

Spatial Research brings eight workflows together in the Advanced research workspace: street imagery, private GIS imports, drawing and measurement, selected-satellite pass calculations, public transit, Canadian AQHI/cameras, dated image comparison and Scene Director. Open the tab through the Research/Finance/OSINT tools area or Help. Use Expand when the central dashboard column is too narrow for detailed map work.

The workbench uses Watchtower's existing account and map infrastructure. A Spatial tools button on registered 2D maps loads the shared toolbar. Pin, Path and Area work on that map; Spatial tools inside the toolbar opens the full workbench at the same camera position. My layers toggles your visible private geometry on that map. This toolbar does not change the original main-globe aircraft feed or turn reference inventories into live observations.

Street imagery: find, inspect and follow a sequence

1. Select Street imagery, choose Panoramax or KartaView, and zoom to a street or neighbourhood. Example area supplies a practical starting location; it does not guarantee current source availability.
2. Choose Search current area. Panoramax searches the bounded map viewport; KartaView asks for photos near its centre. These are bounded photo reads, not exhaustive global coverage layers.
3. Select a marker or record. Inspect the capture date, upload date, creator/credit, licence and original-source link. A recently downloaded image can have been captured years earlier.
4. Use Previous photo, Next photo or Load sequence to inspect the available read. A sequence read is bounded to 100 photos; source omissions and longer sequences remain incomplete. A declared equirectangular image supports an interactive panorama; ordinary photographs remain flat images.

Panoramax images carry per-image licences. The workbench displays previews only for the supported declared licences and reviewed image hosts; other records remain source-link-only. KartaView imagery is credited to Grab and KartaView Contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. KartaView clocks without a verified timezone retain their native text and capture date; they are not turned into invented UTC instants. A missing compass is not assumed to face north.

Mapillary is optional. Save your own eligible client access token in API Connections, then choose Mapillary. Credentials stay encrypted in the existing owner vault. Query results are owner-private and are excluded from shared caches, Search, public MCP and scene evidence exports. A configured connection is not proof of imagery coverage or every display entitlement. No provider subscription or credential is bundled with the workbench.

Private GIS: import and keep control of persistence

Choose My GIS layers and select or drop GeoJSON/JSON, KML, KMZ or GPX. Files are parsed in a browser worker and are not uploaded. Review the preview before choosing Add preview to my layers. The accepted coordinate system is WGS84 longitude/latitude; projected files need reprojection before import.

The file limit is 30 MiB, with bounded expanded KMZ size, feature count, coordinates and properties. DTDs, external entities, network links, encrypted archives and remote model references are rejected. Embedded external images/models are not imported. Descriptions and properties are sanitized and bounded; this is not a byte-for-byte archival importer. Original coordinate heights and accepted source timestamp arrays are retained, while rendering is two-dimensional. GPX track-segment gaps remain gaps; the workbench does not synthesize a vehicle animation from a path.

For each layer, use Show/Hide, Locate, Export GeoJSON or Remove. Imported and drawn features are session work until you choose Save in this browser. Saved work is scoped to the verified account in this browser's IndexedDB storage; it is not a server or cloud backup. Other devices and another browser profile will not automatically have it. Clearing browser data removes the local copy, so export a backup first. Browser-local files and previously exported backups are separate from server account records.

Reload saved workspace discards unsaved session edits only after confirmation. Concurrent saves use revisions: a conflicting tab must reload instead of silently overwriting another saved revision. An unknown saved format is preserved for Recovery export or an explicit Reset this browser workspace. Changing account or entering application replay hides private rendered work and stops active operations. Live private tools require verified access again before displaying saved work.

Drawing and measurements

In Draw / measure, name the annotation and select Pin, Path or Area. Click the map to add vertices; Undo vertex removes the last point and Finish drawing completes the annotation. Pins finish on a single click. Cancel or Escape abandons an unfinished drawing. Shared 2D map toolbars offer the same actions.

Lengths use a spherical-Earth great-circle calculation; polygon areas use spherical geometry. Values are research measurements, not surveyed boundaries, engineering lengths or legal parcel areas. Self-crossing drawn boundaries are rejected. Date-line display is unwrapped independently of the exported original coordinates. Use layer export and an appropriate GIS/survey workflow when precision matters.

Satellite passes: predictions with a declared epoch

Satellite passes searches the existing public orbital catalogue for a name or NORAD number. Select the desired record, choose an observer latitude/longitude or Use map centre, set a UTC window of 1–72 hours and a minimum elevation. You can also enter from the selected satellite's detail in the Satellite & Sensor Data globe.

The planner propagates one selected OMM record with SGP4. It reports up to twelve qualifying passes, start/peak/end, peak elevation, rise bearing and modeled sunlight/dark-sky overlap. The first pass has an estimated ground track. If the object is already above the threshold at the start, its rise is unknown within the window; if it remains above the threshold at the end, the set is explicitly clipped rather than invented.

An element epoch older than seven days at the analysis date, a future-dated epoch or invalid elements is refused. At the 16 October 2026 implementation audit, the existing CelesTrak collector was paused and its retained elements were dated 4 October. The workbench does not reset that source pause or relabel those elements as current. To study their original period, choose a date near the element epoch and explicitly enable Historical reconstruction. To calculate from newer elements you already have, load a local OMM JSON object or array; those supplied elements stay in the session and are not independently authenticated by Watchtower.

Observer height is assumed to be sea level. Sunlight uses a cylindrical Earth-shadow model and approximate Sun position. Clouds, brightness and your local skyline are not modeled. “Visible” is modeled sunlight/darkness overlap, not a guarantee that a person will see the satellite, and a pass is not an imaging schedule. Export calculations retains the orbital epoch, analysis clock, actual calculation time and assumptions.

Transit: real source positions, bounded coverage

Select an operator in Transit, choose Go to operator and Load / refresh positions. The initial enabled sources are Toronto TTC, Hamilton HSR, Durham Region Transit, Boston MBTA, Netherlands OVapi and Norway Entur. The Austin entry remains disabled pending qualification of a changing source download. Other agencies are outside this release.

The feed's native vehicle timestamp is preferred; a feed timestamp fallback is labelled. Positions older than ten minutes or materially future-dated are excluded. Unknown clocks remain explicitly unknown. Source speed is metres per second; no speed, bearing or movement is fabricated. TTC is a surface-vehicle feed and does not provide subway positions.

Filter loaded records by route, name or ID and inspect a marker for its original clock and source. Refresh each minute works only while this view is visible; source caching, capacity limits and permission/rate pauses still apply. An empty or partial feed does not mean that no vehicles are operating. Source evidence exports retain these qualifications and attribution.

Canadian AQHI and public camera stills

AQHI / cameras offers ECCC's Canadian Air Quality Health Index and reviewed DriveBC, Calgary and Toronto traffic-camera sources. Use Go to source to orient the map. AQHI is Canada's 1–10+ scale: low 1–3, moderate 4–6, high 7–10 and very high above 10. It is not US AQI and should not be compared numerically as if it were a universal pollution scale. The display flags aging observations and withholds the current value after six hours; a last reported value keeps its own observation time.

Camera entries are public reference locations and source-published still images. They are not guaranteed live video. A Watchtower image-check time is not the frame's capture time. Source camera direction can be unknown, and Calgary address quadrants are not compass bearings. DriveBC partner credits are retained and third-party imagery awaiting rights review is withheld. Ontario511's reviewed catalogue was unavailable at qualification; no camera inventory is inferred from that failure.

Dated imagery: discover first, compare with context

1. Open Image comparison and pan/zoom to a study area no larger than 25 square degrees on one side of the date line.
2. Choose HLS Sentinel-2, HLS Landsat 8/9 or both. Search a window of up to 32 days within the last year.
3. Inspect acquisition dates, source granule footprints and cloud metadata. Use as A/B fills the comparison controls. The read is bounded to 200 recent granules per product.
4. Choose Load A / B comparison. Both NASA Worldview Snapshot responses must explicitly confirm pixels before the paired preview appears. Drag the reveal control to inspect the two dated images, then Export comparison recipe to retain products, dates, area and check times.

HLS previews are 30 m products. The optional VIIRS NOAA-21 daily overview is 250 m and uses manually selected dates; it is not an HLS acquisition listing. The date labels describe source products, not continuous live imaging. A footprint or low whole-granule cloud percentage does not establish clear pixels everywhere in your selected area. Cloud, season, illumination and sensor differences can explain apparent change. This is visual comparison, not an automated change-detection or attribution model.

Scene Director: a guided map story

Open Scene Director, name the scene and capture a map view with a shot name, duration and notes. A shot records the camera and visible private-layer references. Optionally include up to 3,000 loaded public evidence geometries with their source clocks. Capture several shots, reorder them, edit duration/notes, preview a shot and use Play, Pause or Stop / restore view. A scene supports 1–40 shots and at most ten minutes total.

Playback uses captured metadata by default. The explicit Refresh public source recipes during playback option requests current public data instead. Imported evidence is supplied by the scene author and is not independently authenticated. Captured camera/photo metadata does not archive image bytes or reproduce an old live camera frame. Private Mapillary output is excluded from captured shared evidence.

Save scene to workspace retains the scene in session; Save in this browser persists the workspace. Export scene JSON shares a portable definition. Referenced private geometry is excluded by default. Enable Include referenced private geometry only when you want recipients to receive and read that data; up to twelve layers may be included. Importing a scene is a local operation. Reviewing its notes and provenance remains important even when its schema validates.

A practical combined workflow

Import a study boundary you are entitled to use, locate it, and add a named research pin. Inspect dated street imagery around the pin, then compare two suitable satellite-preview dates. If relevant, add public transit or Canadian AQHI/camera context. Capture a short scene with explicit notes about what each source can and cannot establish. Save locally and export the scene with only the private geometry you deliberately intend to share.

The Spatial Research methods document the source list, limits, attribution and failure behavior. Third-party software notices retain the licences for selected adapted God’s Eye View algorithms and bundled viewer/parser libraries.

Source attribution and availability

Qualifications checked 16 October 2026 UTC; counts change. No endorsement by source agencies is implied.

TTC's exact feed is published through Toronto's open-data portal; the specific catalogue licence field has been unspecified, while the portal-wide OGL-Toronto and its attribution are retained here. This qualification is not an independent source licence issued by Watchtower.

ECCC AQHI: Contains information licenced under the Data Server End-use Licence of Environment and Climate Change Canada. NASA: imagery from NASA Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS), ESDIS and HLS/VIIRS product teams; Worldview, CMR API. Orbital elements: existing CelesTrak public GP catalogue; associated catalogue metadata from GCAT (J. McDowell), CC BY4.0. Background map © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Processing and retention

Reviewed HTTPS destinations, bounded bodies/deadlines, no general URL proxy. One reviewed Panoramax redirect may reach its declared public storage host; other redirects are rejected. Source access denials 401/403/405/451 pause new collection pending review. Rate failures retain cooldowns. Public source reads use bounded persistent caches; permission controls survive restarts and updates. Camera/photo bytes have only a bounded short-lived memory cache; scene exports do not archive frames.

Transit cadence at least 60 seconds; AQHI station catalogue 12 hours / observations 15 minutes; camera catalogue 15 minutes; street metadata 1 hour; CMR 30 minutes. Readers may return qualified dated retained metadata after source failure with its original clocks; expired data is withheld. No background polling occurs from hidden browser transit views. Sources are not a complete world inventory.

Private GIS, scenes, drawings and local OMM never enter public source storage or MCP. Own-token Mapillary uses the existing owner-bound encrypted API Connections path, including post-read owner/vault revalidation. GIS/scenes are browser-local, not server account storage.

Software provenance

Selected GTFS and satellite-pass algorithms adapted from God's Eye View commit e2274bbf0ceaeb2e14f8a59d63e77000553c6816 (MIT). Pinned libraries and full notices are in third-party notices. Bundled noncommercial datasets and upstream local-server credential assumptions were not imported.