Prioritized Capture

A key challenge facing the LayerDrone Network is that not all of earth needs capture. Areas vary immensely in the benefits of high-quality aerial imagery captured at a higher frequency or even on-demand. Some critical factors include:

• Human activity, active presence, and footprint

• Built environment complexity, density, and value

• Rate of change in the environment

• Restrictions on collection (legal or environmental)

• Active markets for data, which is a way of saying that any human activity collecting data should prioritize collection where other humans want that data and can fund its capture

The supply-led missions are intended to approximate these target spexigons to let new markets flourish, while the demand-led missions ultimately best reflect where humans are willing to pay for standardized aerial imagery.

The LayerDrone Network, via a governance process, will ultimately be developing missions and establishing rewards, with the primary goal of monetizing the underlying data. The process for this will likely vary over time and as the network expands.