Aerial

Every retail deal a commercial real estate broker works needs aerials: the site circled on a satellite photo, the neighboring centers boxed with their tenants' logos, road names, traffic counts, signals and access points, all laid out on an 11 x 17 sheet at three zoom levels. At the brokerage I built this for, each package took a GIS and marketing team days. Aerial drafts one in a minute from public data, and the broker finishes it in an editor that prints exactly what's on screen.

The draft comes from OpenStreetMap for the center and its roads, state parcel records for the lot lines, and USDA summer imagery (or the state's most recent flight) underneath. A layout engine places every box, circle, and leader line so nothing collides. Brokers can drop a drive-and-walk-time label between the site and any spot, measured by road, and outline a parcel once so every later aerial covering it carries the outline. The PDF is rendered on the server by a headless browser, sharp enough to print at full size.