Areas of Interest (Areas) in Skylight allow you monitor areas more carefully, such as protected areas, buffers around an EEZ, etc.

User-created custom areas are also necessary for some functionalities in Skylight:

• Creating Saved Filters and Alerts 
• Generating Entry Events, Speed Range Events

Areas can also be used as a filter to only show (and download) data within a particular area.

Important: Areas larger than 1,000,000 sq km cannot be used to generate Entry or Speed Range events.

Area Creation

To start creating an Area of Interest (AoI) in Skylight, open the Areas menu and select Create an Area.

A configuration panel will appear, guiding you through three steps:

1. Define the Area of Interest (AoI) boundary.

Choose how you would like to create the polygon for your Area of Interest. You can:

• Draw the area manually on the map
• Enter geographic coordinates
• Upload a KML or KMZ file

Draw on Map

After clicking on “Draw on Map” start clicking on the map to add points to your shape. To finish, you need to double click to close the polygon or you can as well click on the first point. 

Enter Coordinates

You can use longitude/latitude coordinates (x, y) in the decimal system to create an area. When you are entering coordinates, separate the coordinates by a comma and enclose each pair with brackets like: [7.0001, 7.1234]. 

The first and last set of coordinates must also match to close the polygon and the entire set of brackets must be enclosed in triple brackets. If the coordinates have been entered correctly, the “Display” button will become available and you will be able to view your area on the map. 

Upload KML/KMZ File

The third option for creating an area is uploading a file in KML/KMZ format. This can be the most accurate representation of particular areas, especially official zones (EEZs, MPAs, etc.).

Click on “Choose file” to navigate to the file you want to upload. 

NOTE: The most common reasons that KML/KMZ files fail to upload is that they do not contain a single, closed polygon; or they are not under 20 KB in size (which is a polygon with maximum ~300 points). 

2. Configure AoI-dependent events. 

Select which events should be associated with the Area of Interest. You can enable:

• Entry events
• Speed range events, generated based on customizable parameters. You can define multiple speed range conditions, each triggering event generation according to these conditions.

3. Name and save the Area of Interest.

Provide a name for your Area of Interest and, optionally, a short description. Once complete, click Save to finalize your AoI configuration.