Know where to send the patrol before the report comes in.
Monthly satellite scans of your concession or district flag new clearings and muddy ponds inside the boundary, so the field check goes to a coordinate.
- GSD
- High / 0.5–2 m
- Cadence
- Monthly
- Platform
- High-res satellite
- Spectral
- RGB
How new workings get found now
You are responsible for a boundary you cannot walk. The patrols cover the tracks a vehicle can take, and that is a small part of the edge. Most of the rest gets seen through other people: a liaison officer who heard something in a village, a contractor who noticed fresh spoil from the road, a neighbouring licence holder, a message from a local contact who would rather not be named.
Every one of those reports is late. By the time it reaches you, the clearing has turned into pits and a settling pond, and there are people on site. The field team drives out to a place that was found after the fact, and the first conversation is held with the occupants already established. Back at the office, the director or the ministry asks how long it had been there, and the honest answer is that nobody knew.
If you sit in a cadastre office, the version is the same with a district in place of a concession: licence polygons in the register, a thin inspection team, and a map of what is happening on the ground that only exists where someone has been.
Illegal Mine Map gives you a monthly look at the whole boundary. It flags what is new, and your people go to the flagged places instead of to wherever the last phone call pointed.
What arrives each month
The pilot is run on one boundary that you choose. Each month's pass is delivered once it is done, and stays in the same record as the months before.
Flagged site layer
GeoPackage or shapefileA map layer of candidate bare-earth clearings and turbid ponds inside your boundary. It opens in the GIS that already holds your permit areas, so you can see a flag against the licence line and the exclusion zones.
Month-over-month change list
CSVEach flagged site marked as new, grown or unchanged against last month's pass. It is the list your supervisor reads first, with the new entries at the top.
Coordinates for field verification
CSV or GPXThe position of every flagged site, in the format your field team loads onto a handheld or a phone. The team visits, looks, and records what is there.
A running record
Layer historyEvery month's flags kept together, so you can show when a site first appeared and how it changed. That is the answer to the "how long had it been there" question.
How it works
Send the boundary
The concession or district boundary as a shapefile or GeoPackage, once. Tell us which parts of it matter most, such as an exclusion zone or a river frontage.
A monthly pass
High-resolution satellite imagery over the boundary is taken each month. If cloud covers the area, the pass waits for the next clear window.
Compare with last month
Bare-earth clearings and turbid ponds are picked out and set against the previous month, so the list shows what has changed and not everything that exists.
Delivered to your GIS
You get the flagged site layer, the change list and the coordinates. The field team takes it from there.
Your team verifies
Someone goes to the flagged coordinates. What they find goes back into your own records. A flag is never a finding until a person has seen the place.
Where it fits
The service sits ahead of field verification and does nothing after it. It does not decide what happens at a site, and it does not replace the people who go there. What it changes is how the visit gets chosen: a boundary too large to walk becomes a short list worth a trip, and the record behind each flag can go into an incident log or a report to the regulator.
Limits
These are the things a monthly satellite pass cannot tell you. They are also the reason a flag is a place to visit.
Candidates, not proof
A clearing or a turbid pond is consistent with an unlicensed working. It is also consistent with a survey line, a road cut, a borrow pit or a pond that belongs to a licensed operation. Only a visit settles it.
Monthly, not continuous
Activity that begins and is cleared between two passes can be missed. The cadence is a target, not a guarantee. Cloud can push a pass to the next clear window.
Clearings and ponds, not people
At 0.5–2 m a pixel, what shows is ground that has changed. People, vehicles and equipment are not identified. A single small pit a few metres across may be only a few pixels and can go unflagged.
Canopy hides early work
Under dense forest canopy, a clearing may not show from above until it has grown or the canopy has opened. The first weeks of a working under trees can go unseen.
Boundary only
The scan covers the boundary you send. Activity outside it is not watched.
Who it's for
- Land and security managers at concession holders who have more boundary than they can patrol.
- Government mining-cadastre and inspectorate officers who watch a district of licences with a small field team.
- Teams that already run field verification and want to choose where to send it.
Who it's not for
- Teams that want confirmation that a site is illegal. That takes a visit and the licence register.
- Real-time or daily monitoring, or an alarm the same day a clearing opens.
- Identifying people, vehicles or equipment on the ground.
- Enforcement or legal action. This gives a place to look, not evidence for a case.
Questions before a pilot
Does this confirm illegal activity?
No. It flags candidates for a field check. Whether a working is unlicensed depends on the licence register and on what someone finds at the site.
What if activity starts and is cleared within a month?
It can be missed. The pass is monthly, so a working that opens and is cleared between two passes may not appear at all.
What about cloud cover?
Cloud can hide the ground. When it does, the pass moves to the next available clear window and the list is delivered late rather than filled with guesses.
Can it see people or equipment?
No. It reads changes to the land surface: cleared ground and the colour of ponds. It does not identify people, vehicles or machines.
Does forest canopy delay detection?
Yes. Under dense canopy a clearing may not be visible from above until it has grown, so early activity under trees can be missed.
How do we check it against what we know on the ground?
Take the flagged coordinates to the field and compare them with your own incident log and past patrol records. Tell us where your known workings are when the pilot is scoped, and they can be set beside the flags.
Will it work with our GIS and permit layers?
The layers open in a standard GIS. Send the boundary and exclusion zones as a shapefile or GeoPackage and the flags can be read against them.
Who owns what you deliver?
Use and ownership terms for the delivered layers are written into the agreement before work begins. The satellite imagery behind them keeps the provider's own licence.
How is a pilot priced?
Each pilot is scoped and quoted on its own, from the size of the area, the length of the pilot and how often you need it. You get a written scope you can take through your own approval.
Start monitoring your boundary.
Send the boundary and we will tell you what a pilot over it would involve.