Data Acquisition

Working with Projects · 4 min read

Tasks are background jobs that fetch terrain elevation, map features, and satellite imagery for your project area. Understand how they work and how to track their progress.

What tasks are

When the platform downloads terrain elevation, road and field data, or satellite imagery for a project area, it runs a background task. Tasks are queued, processed asynchronously, and update their status as they progress. You do not need to stay on the page while a task runs.

Each task is tied to a specific project. When a task completes successfully, it produces one or more assets that are automatically attached to the project and made available in the Editor.

Task types

There are three types of data acquisition tasks:

Terrain (DTM) — downloads and processes elevation data for the map area. The output is a processed height map image ready for the Editor's terrain layer.
Vector (OSM) — downloads and preprocesses map features from OpenStreetMap, or processes an uploaded OSM file. The output is a structured vector dataset containing roads, rivers, fields, and other geographic features projected into the project's local space.
Imagery — downloads and processes a satellite image composite for the area. The output is a projected raster image that can be used as a visual overlay in the Editor.

Task statuses

A task moves through the following statuses from creation to completion:

Queued — the task has been accepted and is waiting for an available processing slot.
Running — the task is actively being processed.
Retrying — the task encountered an error and will be attempted again automatically.
Completed — the task finished successfully and produced one or more assets.
Failed — the task exceeded its retry limit. Open the task detail page to view the error message.

Provider downloads vs uploads

Each task type supports two source modes.

Provider mode means the platform fetches data from an external source on your behalf — no files are needed from you, just a valid area selection. The platform automatically selects an appropriate data provider based on coverage for your location.

Upload mode means you supply the source file yourself. For terrain and imagery, a GeoTIFF is georeferenced and processed automatically to match your map dimensions; a PNG or JPG is used directly as a pre-processed image. For vector data, you can upload a raw .osm, .xml, or .pbf file.

Uploads have a maximum file size limit. If your file exceeds it, you will need to reduce it before uploading.

Throttle and parallelism

How many tasks can run simultaneously and how many you can queue per hour is limited. If you reach the concurrent task limit, newly triggered tasks wait in the queue and start automatically when a slot opens. You can monitor all active and recent tasks from the Tasks page in the dashboard.