Hi everyone,

Project snapshot

• AOI: Costa Rica (~51,000 km²)

• Plots: 14,000 (1 ha each)

• Dates to inspect: Jan-2021, Jan-2022, Jan-2023, Jan-2024

• Tools: Collect Earth Desktop + QGIS

• Team: 5 interpreters working in parallel

• Current plan: Insights Platform – Basic (70 k PU/month, 500 PU/min)

Issue

• With Visual-tile streaming (1 PU/tile) we exhausted the quota in a week.

• Usage dashboard has shown 0 PU and only 9 requests for several days (possible burst-triggered block).

• We need to restart work and pick a workflow that won’t hit the limit again.

Options I’m considering

1. Stay with streaming but upgrade temporarily (Enterprise S or L) and add a caching proxy.

2. Download all Visual Quads (Basemap Global) and serve them via MapProxy/GeoServer; work offline.

3. Use NICFI quads (1,500 PU/quad) only in forest zones and Basemap Global elsewhere.

4. Push quads to GEE and let interpreters view via Earth Engine.

Key questions

• What workflow do others use when multiple analysts review large visual samples?

• Any best practices to stay within the 500 PU/min burst when 5 people pan/zoom simultaneously?

• For Basemap Global, can anyone confirm ~300 PU per quad? (It’s not in public docs.)

• Is it smarter to take Enterprise S for one month and downgrade back to Basic, or buy top-ups on Basic?

• If you’ve combined Collect Earth with quads served from MapProxy, any performance tips?

Any guidance, sample scripts, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!