# Preliminary property analysis

Last updated: 2026-10-18

> Cut roads, buildings and water out of a property, then read terrain, canopy height and degraded land on the land that remains, in one run. A pilot for properties in Panama.

How much of this property is land you could work, and what is on it? The analysis first cuts out roads, buildings and water, then runs terrain aspect and slope, canopy height and degraded land on what remains, so every number refers to that land.

**Pilot. Its road data covers Panama.**

## Who it is for

- **Carbon project developers.** Get a first read of a candidate property in one step, on its land area rather than the area on the title.
- **Land acquisition teams.** Compare properties on the same measures before deciding which ones to visit.
- **Restoration organizations.** Start a site plan from the workable area, its slopes and its open land.

## What goes in

A property boundary as a polygon, and these settings:

No settings: it runs with fixed defaults.

## Data sources

- [OpenStreetMap roads](https://www.openstreetmap.org/), by OpenStreetMap contributors. Spatial resolution: Vector lines. Temporal resolution: Edited continuously. Coverage: Global; the extract the analysis reads covers Panama. License: [ODbL](https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright). Widened by road class; tracks stay as land.
- [Google Open Buildings v3](https://sites.research.google/gr/open-buildings/), by Google Research. Spatial resolution: Footprints detected from 50 cm imagery. Temporal resolution: One snapshot, detected in May 2023. Coverage: Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. License: [CC BY 4.0 or ODbL 1.0](https://sites.research.google/gr/open-buildings/). Footprints detected with confidence of 0.75 or more, widened by 10 m. Cite: [Sirko et al. 2021, arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.12283).
- [JRC Global Surface Water v1.4](https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/), by European Commission Joint Research Centre, Google. Spatial resolution: 30 m, from Landsat. Temporal resolution: Monthly water history, 1984–2021. Coverage: Global. License: [Free, without restriction (Copernicus)](https://global-surface-water.appspot.com/download). Pixels where the satellite record saw water at least half the time. Cite: [Pekel et al. 2016, Nature](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20584).

## What you get

- The property area, the area removed as roads, buildings and water, and the land that remains.
- Aspect and slope, canopy height groups and degraded land, measured on the land that remains.
- Each step’s own result: if one step fails, the others still report.

### Map layers

- **Removed from the analysis.** Roads, buildings and water cut out of the property before terrain, canopy and degraded land were read.
- **Aspect.** Compass direction each slope faces, from a bare-earth 30 m terrain model. Grey is flat ground.
- **Slope.** Slope steepness in four bands: 0–5°, 5–15°, 15–30°, and 30° or more.
- **Canopy height screening.** Canopy grouped by height: low (under 1 m), intermediate (1–3 m) and tall (3 m and up).
- **Degraded land.** Grass and bare ground mapped on high-resolution imagery, after small patches are removed.

## Limits

- A pilot. Its road data covers Panama only, so properties elsewhere do not run yet.
- Rivers under tree cover can be missed by the water data.
- Settings are fixed. To change a threshold, run the single analysis.
- The limits of the terrain, canopy height and degraded land analyses apply to each step.

## Where it fits

Run it as the first look at a candidate property, before a site visit. The land figure feeds an early feasibility estimate; the single analyses go deeper where a question matters.

## Related data layers

- Mapbox - Roads: Road lines from Mapbox Streets, including highways and local streets, for understanding access and regional connectivity.
- Rivers & Streams: Rivers, streams, and canals from the Mapbox Streets waterway layer, showing the drainage network around a site.
- Global Slope: Terrain steepness in degrees derived from NASADEM elevation, highlighting gentle, moderate, and steep ground worldwide.

## Tools and guides

- [Software for ARR carbon projects](https://restorationscope.com/blog/arr-carbon-monitoring-software)
- [KML to shapefile converter](https://restorationscope.com/tools/kml-to-shapefile)
- [Geolocation file checker for Verra projects](https://restorationscope.com/tools/verra-geolocation-file-checker)

## Questions teams ask

### Why remove roads, buildings and water first?

They are not land you can plant, so leaving them in inflates every area and share. Cutting them out first means the terrain, canopy and degraded land numbers describe the land a project could use.

### Can I change the settings?

No. It runs each step at a fixed version with its defaults, so properties compare like for like. Run the single analyses to use your own thresholds.

### Does it include forest cover history?

No. Run forest cover analysis beside it for tree cover in 2000 and the loss since.

### What happens if one step fails?

The others still report, and the failed step says why. The whole run stops only if preparing the property fails (for example, an invalid boundary or no land left after the cut) or every step fails.

More: [All analyses](https://restorationscope.com/analyses). Book a call: https://cal.com/bernat/restoration-scope-initial-call