Soarvo Glossary

Overview

Soarvo is used across surveying, drone mapping, GIS, and asset inspection — domains with overlapping but distinct terminology. This glossary covers the acronyms and platform terms that come up most often in the Knowledge Base and Soarvo's UI.

Soarvo Platform Terms

Project: Top-level container that groups related sites together (e.g. all sites for one client). Holds projects-wide settings: coordinate system, measurement system, category. See How Soarvo Structures Data.
Location: A specific physical site inside a project. Each Location holds its own datasets (point clouds, orthomosaics, features). Multiple Locations can sit inside one Project.
Reference Location: A Location flagged as project-wide, so its datasets appear in every other Location in the project. Useful for a single shared baseline (control points, design files) referenced by many sites. See Reference Locations.
Feature Type: A reusable schema defining a category of object users can capture — e.g. "Manhole", "Tree", "Streetlight". Has a geometry (point/line/polygon) and a set of attributes.
Feature: A specific instance of a Feature Type captured against a real-world object — one manhole, one tree. Has the Feature Type's attributes filled in plus its own geometry.
Secondary Feature: An auto-generated child Feature linked to a parent. Examples: Grid Lines, Parallel Lines, Tree Inspections (BS3998).
Project Dashboard: Configurable widget board summarising activity, inventory, and to-dos at the project level. See Using the Project Dashboard.
Alignment: A Linear Feature marked as the reference centreline for chainage and offset calculations. Common in road, rail, and pipeline surveys. See Alignment and Chainage.
Default Codes: Special strings placed in a Feature Type's attribute settings that auto-populate values, control visibility, or run calculations in the mobile app. See Mobile App Data Entry Shortcuts.
Processing Tokens: The unit of consumption for raw drone-imagery processing into orthomosaics, DSMs, and 3D models. Visible on the Resource limits page.

User Roles (short forms)

Administrator: Full platform access. Only role that can invite other Administrators.
Project Manager (Project Manager): Creates projects and locations. Invites users (except Administrators). Sees every project in the tenant.
Project Supervisor: Must be assigned to specific projects/locations. Uploads and manages data within assigned scope.
Editor: Creates and edits Features inside shared locations; cannot upload data.
Viewer: View-only access to shared data; uses measuring tools but cannot create or edit.
Mobile-User: Mobile app access for field capture, plus read access in the web portal.
Mobile-Only: Mobile app only. No web portal access at all.

See User Roles & Permissions for the full permissions matrix.

Geospatial & Surveying Acronyms

CRS — Coordinate Reference System: The mathematical model that defines how coordinates relate to physical locations on Earth. Examples: WGS84, OSGB36 / British National Grid. Every Soarvo Project has one CRS; all uploaded data and captured features are aligned to it.
EPSG: European Petroleum Survey Group code — a registry of CRS identifiers. Most CRS in Soarvo are picked by EPSG code (e.g. 27700 = British National Grid, 4326 = WGS84 lat/lng).
BNG — British National Grid: The Ordnance Survey's coordinate system for Great Britain. EPSG code 27700.
ITM — Irish Transverse Mercator: The standard Irish coordinate system. EPSG code 2157.
TM65 / TM75: Older Irish coordinate systems still encountered in legacy datasets. EPSG codes 29902 (TM65) and 29903 (TM75 / Irish Grid).
GPS — Global Positioning System: The US satellite navigation system. Used colloquially to mean any satellite positioning; technically a subset of GNSS.
GNSS — Global Navigation Satellite System: Umbrella term covering GPS (US), GLONASS (Russia), Galileo (EU), BeiDou (China). Modern rovers typically use all four for higher accuracy.
RTK — Real-Time Kinematic: Centimetre-grade positioning technique using a base station's corrections sent in real time to a rover. Soarvo supports RTK via NTRIP corrections through compatible rovers — see nordalp X6 PRO.
NTRIP — Networked Transport of RTCM via Internet Protocol: The standard protocol for streaming RTK corrections over the internet from a base station to a rover. Requires a URL, mountpoint, username, and password from your NTRIP provider.
RTCM: The data format for RTK corrections transported by NTRIP. Modern Soarvo-supported rovers require RTCM 3.x mountpoints.
NMEA: Standard text-based format for transmitting positioning data between GPS receivers and computers. Soarvo Mobile reads NMEA strings from external devices.
GST: An NMEA sentence type giving position-error statistics. Enable GST in your rover app for higher-quality accuracy readings.
HDOP: Horizontal Dilution of Precision — a numeric quality indicator (lower = better) for horizontal GPS positions.
RTK Float / RTK Fixed: Two stages of RTK quality. Float = approximate (sub-metre). Fixed = full centimetre-grade. On the RD8200SG, a flashing green LED = Float; solid green = Fixed.

Data Formats

Orthomosaic: A geometrically corrected aerial photo where every pixel sits at its true geographic location. Typically produced from drone imagery and uploaded to Soarvo as a GeoTIFF.
Point Cloud: A dataset of 3D points capturing the shape of a real-world object or terrain. Sources: drone photogrammetry, LiDAR scanners, mobile mapping. Soarvo supports LAS / LAZ.
DSM — Digital Surface Model: A raster representing the elevation of the top surface of objects in an area (including buildings and trees).
DTM — Digital Terrain Model: A raster representing the bare-earth elevation, with buildings and vegetation removed.
GeoTIFF: A TIFF image file with embedded geo-referencing — typically used for orthomosaics and DSMs.
Shapefile: An ESRI vector format consisting of multiple files ( .shp, .dbf, .shx, .prj). Always upload as a ZIP containing all parts.
DWG / DXF: AutoCAD vector formats commonly used for engineering and survey drawings.
KML / KMZ: Google Earth's vector format (KMZ is a zipped KML). Soarvo supports KML for import.
OBJ: 3D mesh format consisting of .obj, .mtl, and texture files. Always upload as a ZIP. Remove spaces from texture filenames before zipping.
IFC — Industry Foundation Classes: Standard format for BIM (Building Information Models). Soarvo can display IFC files alongside surveyed data.
E57: Standard format for storing point cloud and panorama data, often combined with 360° images.
WMS — Web Map Service: OGC standard for serving georeferenced map tiles over the web. Used for background maps. See WMS & Custom Raster Layers.
ZXY tiles: Web map tile addressing scheme (z = zoom, x/y = column/row). Used by most modern web basemaps as an alternative to WMS.

Workflow & Survey Domain Terms

BS3998: British Standard for tree work and arboricultural surveys. Soarvo's Tree Inspection secondary features implement BS3998 measurements including Root Protection Radius (RPR).
RPR / RPA — Root Protection Radius / Area: The minimum buffer around a tree that should be protected from construction disturbance. Calculated from stem diameters in BS3998. Soarvo auto-calculates RPR via the !CALCRPR default code (cap = 15 metres).
Chainage: The linear distance along a route from a defined start point. Common in road and rail engineering. Soarvo calculates chainage to a marked Alignment via the !CHN default code.
Offset: The perpendicular distance from a feature to a defined linear reference (typically the Alignment).
Snapping: The mobile app's behaviour of attaching a linear feature's start/end to nearby point features (e.g. pipe to manhole). Enables auto-pulled attributes like cover levels. See Manhole + Pipe Snapping.
Position Averaging: Recording GPS readings over a configurable time window and using the averaged value for the feature's position. Improves accuracy in poor satellite conditions. See Position Averaging for Feature Geometry.
Mobile Mapping: The practice of capturing geospatial data from a moving platform — vehicle-mounted scanners, backpack systems, or handheld units.