Introduction

The Vexcel REST API has over 30 services and growing. Application developers working with our platform will need to understand these services in pretty granular detail, but this document is meant for somebody non-technical or someone who is new to APIs to provide an understanding of the types of services and their general functionality. Think of each service as a command that can be sent to the Vexcel library, each responding with information, imagery or metadata. When thinking about the services, they can be grouped into three major categories:

1. Coverage and Metadata

Query the Vexcel Library to find out if we have data products for a given location. These serves don’t return any actual imagery, but information about the imagery and data available. These services answer questions like:

• Do you have imagery for this particular property or region?

• What is your Urban Coverage for Australia?

• What Graysky imagery do you have in Germany for year 2022?

• Do you Have Elevation data (DSM and DTM) at a given location?

• What vintages of Imagery do you have for this coordinate?

• What Resolution bluesky imagery is available for the city core of Portland, OR?

2. Get Imagery and Elevation data

Our bread and butter services. Callers can request imagery as individual standard web Mercator tiles (256X256 pixels each) that seam together to cover larger areas, or as single images covering a larger area (aka discrete images).

• Get a picture of a property or Location as a standard image file (JPG, PNG, Tiff)

• Get a series of tiles that seam together and form a larger image.

• Get the same tiles of elevation data and Imagery for a property or region.

• What is the elevation for this point on top of a roof I am analyzing?

• Add a WMTS layer to my application or GIS system.

3. Elements

These services return Computer Vision derived information (Elements) for a given coordinate. This information includes things like a building's footprint, attributes about the roof like material and condition, attributes about the parcel like presence of a pool or trampoline. This information can be returned as plain text or as a PDF Report.

• Get me the building footprint geometry for the building at this point.

• Does this building have solar panels on the roof?

• Get me a list of properties near this location that have roof condition scores less than 3

• Generate a PDF report of this property that was damaged in the Houston Tornado.

4. Bonus: Utility services

Miscellaneous services to help with authentication, coordinate transformation and the like.

• Authentication. Pass your userID and Password to generate an authentication token

• Find the Geographic coordinate for a pixel in a given image.