Product Documentation

Nearmap Roof Age

About Roof Age

Roof Age is a Nearmap product available for properties in the US. It predicts the roof installation date and therefore age of both residential and commercial roofs. The prediction uses Nearmap imagery, Gen 6 AI data and additional third party data including climate data, building permits and assessor year-built data to arrive at an accurate age estimation.

Roof Age predictions are aligned with property ownership by using parcel boundaries. This enables roof age predictions on only the portion of the roof within a particular parcel rather than the entire building, for example, in the case of row homes.

Where a roof installation is visible in the imagery, the roof installation date can be estimated from image capture dates. In cases where a new roof installation is not visible in imagery or only a single image exists, Nearmap AI estimates roof age based on visible roof condition in the imagery and other environmental factors. When available, permit records and assessor year-built data are also integrated to support the imagery prediction or provide a roof age estimate when no imagery is available.

This ensures comprehensive roof age estimates for every parcel.

To deliver the unprecedented scale of property intelligence offered by Roof Age, we analyzed 2.8 billion roof-instance/image pairs spanning 2.5 million square miles of aerial imagery covering a total of 151 million parcels nationwide. This massive dataset is backed by a rich temporal history, with over half of all parcels featuring 10 or more historical captures, allowing for a deep understanding of roof evolution and condition over time. Because Roof Age’s dataset is precomputed at a national scale, it enables sub–two-second lookups, empowering insurers to quickly evaluate roof-related risks and make faster, more informed underwriting decisions.

Accessing Roof Age

Currently, Roof Age is available in Betterview with additional access options now being introduced. You can access Roof Age for a property in the following ways:

In Betterview via the Construction tab - you can view imagery and compare roof age between two different survey dates.
Via the Roof Age API - If you're a Nearmap customer, you can use this API to retrieve roof age data that includes roof instances, age and type. You can augment this with information about roof condition, materials, objects and so on, using Roof Age API in conjunction with the AI Feature API.
Via the Property Insights and Property Now APIs - If you're a Betterview customer, you can use these APIs to get roof age data.

Small roofs less than 30 sqm (323 sq ft) have been removed from the dataset.

Using this information, insurance carriers can assess the cost of replacing the roof at the end of its life when issuing a new policy.

Roof Age calculation

Calculation of Roof Age is dependent on the imagery available for a given location.

When multiple images are available, a specialized deep learning model designed for detection identifies whether a new roof installation has occurred between captures. If a new roof is detected, the roof installation date is calculated to be between the two image capture dates.
In cases where no new roof installation is identified, or only one image is available, a separate model produces a roof age estimate by utilizing the imagery along with other third-party data.
In cases where no imagery is available, roof age estimates are still provided by analyzing other data sources such as building permits or assessor year-built data where available.

In addition to providing the roof installation date and roof age, the Roof Age product also provides an Evidence Type and a Trust Score with every prediction. These measures help assess the reliability of the predicted roof age and offer additional context and confidence for every prediction.

Evidence Type indicates what data was used to calculate the roof age, which may include imagery as well as supporting evidence.
Trust Score quantifies the reliability of each prediction. It reflects both the strength of the evidence available and the model’s confidence in its prediction.

These combined measures provide transparency around the roof age prediction and allow insurance carriers and other users to evaluate prediction quality and make informed decisions such as the likelihood of a roof replacement being required. For more information about Evidence Types, see this article.