CONSTRUCTION · HOW THE API WORKS

Know the groundbefore you pour concrete.

For developers, real-estate underwriters, infrastructure planners and property insurers: compress terrain, hydrology and ground-motion risk into one buildability score — measured from a global DEM, live Sentinel-2 imagery and the seismic catalogue.

WHAT IT CAN DO

What the API does for construction.

Measure slope, never assume it

A five-point DEM stencil returns a true local gradient and relief, so earthworks exposure is quantified before a surveyor is booked.

See saturated and inundated ground

NDWI and NDMI expose standing water, seasonal flooding and persistently wet substrate that wrecks excavation and drainage budgets.

Separate greenfield from serviced land

NDBI shows how much of the site is already built or hard-standing, which changes clearance cost and utility proximity assumptions.

Price seismic exposure

Five years of catalogued ground motion within 200 km feeds a georisk sub-score that underwriters can defend.

THE FLOW

Coordinate to decision, step by step.

Every construction request runs through the same five stages. Nothing is cached from a neighbouring tile and nothing is invented — if a pixel is unusable, the response says so.

  1. 01
    Input
    lat / lng + mode: construction
    • Single HTTP POST
    • Plot centroid or corridor point
    • No CAD, no survey file
  2. 02
    Observe
    Terrain, surface and hazard sampling
    • DEM five-point stencil at 90 m
    • Sentinel-2 NDWI / NDBI / NDMI
    • Seismic catalogue within 200 km
    • Climate reanalysis at the point
  3. 03
    Derive
    Buildability signals
    • Slope gradient and local relief
    • Inundation and saturation flags
    • Built-up vs greenfield fraction
    • Ground-motion frequency and peak magnitude
  4. 04
    Fuse
    Weighted, deterministic model
    • Terrain weighted highest
    • Georisk second
    • Surface and climate as modifiers
    • Hard penalties for open water
  5. 05
    Output
    0–100 score + band + components
    • Machine-readable JSON
    • Slope and relief exposed raw
    • Same coordinate → same answer
THE DETERMINISTIC PROMISE
Same coordinate → same score. Every request. Every week. Every quarter.

No random seeds. No hidden drift. If you got a 74 last Tuesday, you'll get a 74 next Tuesday — unless the ground itself has changed. That is what makes the score defensible in an underwriting memo, a planning submission, or a board pack.

INPUTS

Three fields in. That is the whole input.

No shapefiles. No polygons. No uploads. No GIS stack to maintain.

latnumber

Latitude in decimal degrees. Use the plot centroid, a proposed foundation point, or an interval along a corridor.

lngnumber

Longitude in decimal degrees.

mode"construction"

Construction mode weights terrain and georisk most heavily and treats dense vegetation as clearance cost rather than a positive.

REQUEST
POST /v1/land-intel/assess
{
  "lat": 19.0760,
  "lng": 72.8777,
  "mode": "construction"
}
RESPONSE
200 OK
{
  "score": 68,
  "classification": "MARGIN_CAUTION",
  "band": "Moderate",
  "mode": "construction",
  "components": {
    "terrain": 61,
    "georisk": 72,
    "surface": 74,
    "climate": 80
  },
  "observations": {
    "elevation_m": 14, "slope_pct": 6.4,
    "relief_m": 22, "ndwi": 0.09,
    "ndbi": 0.12, "seismic_events_5yr": 3
  },
  "generated_at": "2026-07-11T12:04:22Z"
}
DATA SOURCES

Enterprise-grade data. Open licences. Zero cost.

Every construction score is built on the same public Earth-observation feeds that power commercial GIS stacks sold for tens of lakhs to crores per annum. We expose them directly through one simple HTTP call.

Sentinel-2 L2A optical imagery

10–20 m multispectral surface reflectance from ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-2 constellation, served as cloud-optimised GeoTIFFs via the AWS Earth Search STAC catalogue. Every request samples the actual pixel at your coordinate for red, green, NIR and SWIR bands.

Source: ESA / Copernicus · AWS Earth Search STAC · 10–20 m · keyless
NDVI — vegetation vigour
NDWI — open water / wetness
NDBI — built-up surface
NDMI — canopy / soil moisture
Copernicus DEM global elevation

GLO-90 digital elevation model from the Copernicus DEM programme, sampled through a five-point stencil so slope and local relief are measured, not assumed. The centre point plus four surrounding points gives a true local gradient.

Source: Copernicus DEM GLO-90 · Open-Meteo elevation API · 90 m · keyless
Elevation (m)
Slope gradient (%)
Local relief (m)
Scene Classification Layer quality gate

Every sampled pixel is checked against the Sentinel-2 SCL. Cloud, cloud shadow, thin cirrus, saturated and no-data pixels are rejected outright — not smoothed over — so the score only sees ground truth.

Source: Sentinel-2 SCL band · QA check per pixel · no cloud interpolation
Cloud rejection
Shadow rejection
Saturated/no-data rejection
Climate reanalysis & hazard catalogue

Open-Meteo historical climate reanalysis provides temperature, precipitation and humidity baselines at the coordinate. The 5-year seismic catalogue supplies catalogued ground-motion frequency and peak magnitude within 200 km.

Source: Open-Meteo climate API · 5-year global seismic catalogue
Temperature / precipitation
Drought / stress signals
Seismic events 5 yr
THE DETERMINISTIC PROMISE
Same coordinate → same score. Every request. Every week. Every quarter.

No random seeds. No hidden drift. If you got a 74 last Tuesday, you'll get a 74 next Tuesday — unless the ground itself has changed. That's what makes the score defensible in an underwriting memo, a planning submission, or a board pack.

Same coordinate → same score → same decision, every time.
THE OUTPUTS

What you get back.

A plain-English report anyone can read. No remote-sensing degree, no GIS software, no manual report.

1
Overall score
0–100

One simple number that tells you how buildable this site is.

High score = easy ground. Low score = expect extra engineering or avoid.
2
Ground stability
Terrain + hazard

Slope, water saturation, and ground-motion risk measured for the exact point.

Know if you need cut-and-fill, drainage, or stronger foundations before any survey.
3
Site condition
Surface read

What is already on the ground — greenfield vs built-up, wet areas, and usable surface.

Distinguish a cleared plot from one that needs major clearance or dewatering.
4
What it means
Plain label

A simple label like Stable, Caution, or High Risk, plus a recommended action.

Project teams can gate the next stage without waiting for a geotechnical report.
5
Decision-ready
Use in your system

The result comes as clean JSON that any software can read.

Feed it into ERP, due-diligence tools, lender reports, or GIS platforms.

The parameters behind the score.

Every response is one score plus the measured parameters that produced it. Which parameters come back depends on the vertical you query.

Slope
GLO-90 DEM, five-point stencil

Gradient measured at the exact coordinate.

Drives cut-and-fill volume, platform cost and whether cranes and heavy plant can operate.
Relief & ruggedness
DEM neighbourhood

Local elevation variability around the point.

High relief means uneven bearing conditions and expensive earthworks even when average slope looks fine.
Water saturation
NDWI + NDMI

Standing water and retained ground moisture.

Wet ground means dewatering, deeper foundations and seasonal construction windows.
Surface & soil stability
NDVI + NDBI

Whether the site is bare soil, vegetated greenfield or already built-up.

Bare unstable soil signals erosion risk; built-up surface signals clearance and demolition cost.
Ground motion / seismicity
USGS earthquake catalogue

Recorded events and maximum magnitude near the site.

Sets seismic design category, insurance loading and contingency reserve.
Climate load
NASA POWER

Rainfall intensity and temperature extremes.

Informs drainage sizing, curing schedules and realistic build calendars.

What those outputs do in real life.

Site shortlisting at portfolio scale

Push thousands of candidate coordinates through the API and rank them by stability before a single survey team is dispatched.

Pre-feasibility and tender evidence

Attach a reproducible site-risk score with component breakdown to bids, proposals and lender submissions.

Access and logistics planning

Slope and moisture together show where roads, cranes and heavy equipment can realistically operate, and in which season.

Portfolio monitoring

Re-score built and in-progress sites quarterly to catch erosion, waterlogging or encroachment while remediation is still cheap.

LIVE DEMO

Pick a coordinate. See the real output.

These are live calls to the production construction engine — real Sentinel-2 imagery, real elevation, real climate and seismic records. Nothing here is mocked.

POST /v1/land-intel/assess · mode: construction
fetching…
Rootfifteen score
/ 100

Coastal urban expansion zone

Why it scored that way
Climaten/a
Terrainn/a
Geo-riskn/a
Surfacen/a
What the satellite measured here
Slope

Steeper ground means more cut, fill and platform cost

Local relief

How rugged the surrounding ground is

Elevation

Height above sea level at the point

Water saturation (NDWI)

Standing water — dewatering and flood exposure

Ground moisture (NDMI)

Retained moisture that weakens bearing capacity

Surface cover (NDVI)

Greenfield vegetation vs bare, erodible soil

Built-up index (NDBI)

How developed the surface already is

Quakes (5 yr)

Recorded seismic events nearby

Max magnitude

Strongest recent nearby quake

Fused live from Sentinel-2 L2A optical imagery, Copernicus GLO-90 elevation, NASA POWER climate reanalysis and the USGS seismic catalogue — returned in a single JSON response, typically in about a second.

TRADITIONAL VS ROOTFIFTEEN

How this was done before — and what changes.

Every row is a task construction teams already do today. The left column is the traditional method. The right column is the same task with one API call.

Screening a candidate site
Commission a walkover survey and wait weeks for a report.
Score the coordinate in under a second and reject obvious georisk first.
Slope and relief
Estimated from contour maps or eyeballed on site.
Measured from a global DEM with a five-point stencil.
Flood and saturation
Inferred from historical anecdote or coarse hazard zoning.
Observed directly in current Sentinel-2 water and moisture indices.
Same coordinate → same score → same decision, every time.
WHAT THE NUMBER MEANS

Ten bands. One axis. Zero ambiguity.

The 0–100 axis is partitioned into ten calibrated bands, each mapped to a defensible construction decision — identical across every coordinate on Earth.

90–100Foundational
Low slope, stable substrate, no detectable ground motion or hydrological hazard.
Greenlight for heavy structures. Eligible for lowest contingency reserves.
80–89Strong
Stable terrain with negligible seasonal movement.
Standard foundations. No special geotechnical scope required.
70–79Suitable
Mild slope or minor surface variability; no active hazards.
Build with conventional engineering. Confirm drainage design.
WHERE TEAMS USE IT

The operational workflows Rootfifteen replaces.

Site selection & due diligence
Property & infrastructure insurance
Real-estate underwriting
Renewables & utilities siting
Critical infrastructure & public works
Portfolio monitoring & ESG reporting

Pre-screening development sites

Reject obvious georisk before expensive surveys and focus engineering budgets on viable parcels.

Infrastructure corridor planning

Compare route options at regular intervals and reroute early around unstable ground.

Renewables portfolio siting

Rank hundreds of solar, wind, transmission, and warehousing sites on the same axis overnight.

Property insurance re-pricing

Move beyond ZIP-code averages and price single-asset ground risk on a precise 0–100 signal.

WHERE TO IMPLEMENT

Drop the API into the systems that already run construction decisions.

Rootfifteen is one HTTP endpoint. That means it fits inside any software that already touches construction workflows — no new dashboard, no new map stack, no internal GIS team required.

Real-estate due-diligence platforms
Site screening

Reject high-risk parcels before survey spend and rank candidate sites on a single objective score.

Construction ERP / project tools
Pre-feasibility gates

Attach a buildability score to every project record and gate engineering scope before budget approval.

Infrastructure planning suites
Corridor & route studies

Score waypoints along roads, rail, pipelines, and transmission lines and reroute early around unstable ground.

Renewables siting platforms
Solar, wind, storage

Rank hundreds of candidate sites for slope, access, and flood risk before a single site visit.

Property & infrastructure insurers
Risk selection & pricing

Replace ZIP-code averages with a single-asset ground-risk score backed by DEM and seismic data.

Lender & investor data rooms
Tender & underwriting evidence

Add a reproducible, component-level site-risk annex to bids, memos, and lender submissions.

INTEGRATION NOTE
One endpoint, one coordinate, one decision-ready score.

Every construction call returns a 0–100 score, a calibrated band, a machine-readable classification, and the component sub-scores that explain it. Wire it into your underwriting engine, your site-screening workflow, or your command map exactly like any other REST API.

NEXT STEP

Now try it in your own stack.

Tell us what you are building and we will send you endpoint docs, a key, and limits that fit your use case.