Where it fits in your workflow
Between visits
It feeds the quarterly condition review and gives your legal and advocacy colleagues a dated record to cite. Where to send someone, and whether to, stays your call. It does not replace a visit.
Comparing frames by hand
Stop flicking between archived frames.
Looting Monitoring compares each monitored site with its last pass and marks fresh looting pits and vehicle tracks on a dated before/after pair, built for the condition file.
- GSD
- ≤0.5 m (VHR)
- Cadence
- Quarterly
- Source
- VHR satellite / aerial
- Spectral
- RGB
Where the side-by-side runs out
You open last cycle's frame and this cycle's frame on the same site and go looking for what changed. The two passes were taken on different days at different sun angles, so a long shadow reads as a trench and a real pit hides in one.
Every site on the list gets this, and the list is longer than the time you have. The result goes into the condition review as a line or two, and a quiet site is the one that gets the quickest look.
The comparison, step by step
Setting up the two frames
Comparing frames by hand
You find the archived frames, line up the site boundary over both and hope the dates are close enough to compare.
With Looting Monitoring
You register the site boundary once. Each quarter's pass is cut to it and set against the previous pass for you.
Finding new pits and tracks
Comparing frames by hand
You flick between the frames and mark what looks new, site by site, with your eye as the only filter.
With Looting Monitoring
Fresh looting pits and vehicle tracks inside the boundary are flagged on the after image, so you start from marks and not from a blank frame.
Counting what changed
Comparing frames by hand
The count is whatever you had time to note, and the method differs a little from one cycle to the next.
With Looting Monitoring
Each pass comes with a dated count of pits and track segments, made the same way every quarter, so cycles can be set against each other.
Recording where it is
Comparing frames by hand
You read coordinates off the screen and type them into the file.
With Looting Monitoring
Every flag carries its own coordinate and the date of the pass.
A pass you can't read
Comparing frames by hand
A hazy or cloudy frame gets a shrug, and a site can go into the review as quiet when the ground was never visible.
With Looting Monitoring
A covered pass is reported as unusable. It is never reported as no disturbance, and the next pass picks up the gap.
Saying what it means
Comparing frames by hand
You decide whether a disturbance is looting, farming, construction or an old excavation, and you write the condition review.
With Looting Monitoring
The same. We flag new ground disturbance. The cause, the review and any decision to send someone to the site stay with you.
Still yours
The reading of cause, the condition review, field verification and any legal step.
What arrives each quarter
Image pair
Dated before/after pair
The previous pass and the current pass of the same ground, side by side, with both dates on them. Made for the condition file.
Setting up the two framesCount
Flagged disturbance count
A count of fresh looting pits and vehicle track segments for the site in that pass, set beside the previous quarter's.
Counting what changedGIS layer
Coordinates for every flag
A point or outline for each flag, with the date of the pass, for your desktop GIS. Made to sit over the site boundary you already keep.
Recording where it isNote
Pass status
A line for each site saying whether the pass was usable. A site with an unusable pass is reported as such.
A pass you can't read
How it works
Once
- 01
Register the site boundary
You send the boundary of each site as an outline. We keep it as the ground we compare inside.
Each quarter
- 02
A VHR pass each quarter
We collect a very-high-resolution pass of each site, satellite or aerial, for the cycle.
- 03
Compared with the last pass
The new pass is set against the previous one, and new ground disturbance inside the boundary is flagged.
- 04
Pairs delivered with dates and coordinates
You receive the before/after pair, the count and the flag layer for each site, ahead of your review.
Limits
- Quarterly, not continuous
- A quarter is a target pass, not a watch. Anything dug and filled in between two passes may not show, and nothing here tells you when a pit was dug within the quarter.
- Cloud and haze
- Optical imagery needs a clear view of the ground. A covered pass is reported as unusable. The next pass fills the gap, so a site can go a cycle without a usable comparison.
- Resolution floor
- At 0.5 m a pixel is about 20 inches across. Spoil heaps and pit clusters show. A single small pit may be only a few pixels wide and can be missed or come back as a candidate to check. Hairline marks are never traced.
- Disturbance, not cause
- We flag new change to the ground. We can't tell looting from farming, construction or a legitimate excavation, and we don't say who did it.
- Shadow and cover
- Steep relief, deep shadow and vegetation can hide ground. Those places are noted, not guessed at.
Who it's for
For
- Monitoring officers at heritage bodies and UNESCO-affiliated programmes keeping site condition files
- Sites in conflict and post-conflict zones where visits are hard to make
- Review cycles that run quarterly and need a consistent comparison
Not for
- Identifying who dug, or naming a group
- Legal or evidentiary findings
- Real-time or continuous watch
- Finding individual small features at the scale of a hand dig
Questions before you add a site
Does this replace our comparison of archived frames?
It takes over the side-by-side step and gives you marked pairs. You still read them, judge what they mean and write the review.
Does it identify who did it?
No. It flags disturbance, not actors.
Can we use it as legal evidence?
It is a dated, coordinate-stamped observation. Whether it is admissible is a question for your legal team, not us.
What happens when a site is under cloud in a quarter?
We report that pass as unusable. We don't report it as no disturbance. The next pass fills the gap.
Does it tell looting from legitimate excavation?
No. It flags new ground disturbance. Telling the cause apart is a human judgement.
How do we check it against what we already know?
Pick a site whose recent history you know from a visit or from your own comparison. Send the boundary and compare our flags with your notes.
Will the flags open in our GIS?
They come as a layer for a desktop GIS, with the before/after pairs as images. We don't write into your systems.
Who owns the imagery and the flags?
Ownership and licence terms are agreed in writing when you get started. If your legal team needs them earlier, ask.
How is it bought and priced?
The cost depends on how many sites and how large they are. Tell us what you monitor and we'll scope it to that.
Add a site to the next monitoring cycle.
Send us the boundary of one site you already monitor. We'll tell you what a pass can show on it.
Get started