Describe your project. Get a ranked data shortlist in under a minute.
Terrascout matches your project with satellite, aerial and open spatial data, with resolution, cloud-cover feasibility, costs and limitations. No more digging through provider specs.
Try an example
How it reads your brief
Terrascout reads a plain-English brief the way an analyst would, then searches the catalogue with what it found. Hover or tap a phrase or a field to see how they connect.
“Map flood extent along the Hunter River NSW after a major rain event”
- Place
- Hunter River, NSW
- Geocoded to an area of about 75 × 78 km
- Objective
- Flood mapping
- Decides the bands and the suitability notes the ranking uses
- Timing
- Event-based
- Imagery is needed soon after the event, so revisit matters
- Resolution
- 30 m
- Not in the brief: the flood-mapping default
57 sensors and datasets → filtered by coverage, bands and revisit → 6 ranked below
What you get back
The real result for that brief, captured on 21 October 2026.
Radar (SAR) sources are listed first: floods usually come with cloud, and radar flood mapping is the standard method; the Copernicus Global Flood Monitoring service maps floods from Sentinel-1.
| # | Sensor | Type | Resolution | Revisit | Cost | Fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sentinel-1 C-SAR European Space Agency | Radar | 10 m | 6 days | No data fee | 95 |
| 2 | Sentinel-2 MSI European Space Agency | Optical | 10 m | 5 days | No data fee | 96 |
| 3 | NSW Aerial Imagery NSW Spatial Services | Aerial | 5 cm | Surveys vary | No data fee | 87 |
| 4 | OpenTopography Global LiDAR OpenTopography Facility | Elevation | 1 m | Surveys vary | No data fee | 87 |
| 5 | ELVIS LiDAR DEMs Geoscience Australia | LiDAR | 1 m | Surveys vary | No data fee | 87 |
Fit (0–100) weighs resolution against the brief (30%), cost (25%), coverage of the area (20%), revisit time (15%), and sensor status plus its documented suitability for the task (10%). How matching works
Sentinel-1’s 10 m is a product pixel size: ESA gives its Interferometric Wide mode a ground resolution of 5 × 20 m. “No data fee” is about price only: each source’s licence terms are in the full result.
- SAR imagery affected by geometric distortions in mountainous terrain: layover, foreshortening, and shadow effects.
- Moderate cloud cover expected. Multi-temporal compositing recommended.
- LiDAR may be required for formal flood mapping submissions in some jurisdictions.
The catalogue
- 57
- Sensors and datasets
- 40
- Data providers
- No account
- Needed to run a scope
Common questions
- Which satellite data is best for mapping a flood?
- Radar, usually Sentinel-1. Radar images the ground through rain and cloud, by day or night, and floods usually come with cloud. UN-SPIDER calls SAR-based flood mapping a standard and reliable method, and the Copernicus Global Flood Monitoring service maps floods from Sentinel-1. Optical imagery such as Sentinel-2 or Landsat helps when the sky clears.
- Data, method and limits
- UN-SPIDERCopernicus Global Flood MonitoringESA Sentinel-1
- How can I measure ground subsidence from space?
- With radar interferometry (InSAR), which compares repeat radar images of the same area. ESA says it can monitor ground movement down to a few millimetres across wide areas, and the European Ground Motion Service measures movement across Europe from Sentinel-1. It needs a stack of images from the same orbit.
- Data, method and limits
- ESA Sentinel-1European Ground Motion Service
- How is bushfire burn severity mapped?
- With the Normalized Burn Ratio, (NIR − SWIR) / (NIR + SWIR), compared between images from before and after the fire. Landsat is the primary source for the US Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity programme, which also uses Sentinel-2.
- Data, method and limits
- USGS: Normalized Burn RatioMTBS
- How far back does free satellite imagery go?
- The Landsat record starts in 1972. Its 30 m Thematic Mapper archive starts with Landsat 5 in March 1984 and runs to November 2011, and Landsat 7, 8 and 9 continue it, so long studies combine several missions.
- USGS: Landsat 5
- Is satellite data with no fee free to use for anything?
- Not always. Many sources have no data fee but still have licence terms. JAXA's free ALOS-2 ScanSAR product, for example, may be used free of charge subject to the terms of each platform that distributes it. Terrascout shows cost as “No data fee” and gives each source's licence notes separately.
- JAXA: ALOS-2 ScanSAR products
- Is Sentinel-1 really 10 m resolution?
- 10 m is the pixel size of its standard product. ESA gives the Interferometric Wide mode, the default over land, a ground resolution of 5 × 20 m.
- ESA Sentinel-1