7 Questions Every City Should Ask Before Signing a Street-Level Imagery Contract

A guide for municipal procurement officers who want to avoid learning these lessons the hard way.

The gold rush for "digital twins" and infrastructure intelligence is officially on. Over the next five years, municipal governments will collectively pour hundreds of millions of dollars into street-level imagery and AI-driven data contracts.

The trouble is that most of these contracts are being signed without a standardized evaluation framework. Many will underdeliver. Some already have.

The vendors in this space aren't necessarily bad actors, but the category is new and the technology is just obscure enough that procurement officers are often forced to evaluate platforms using criteria the vendors themselves wrote. It’s a classic procurement trap: Cities sign contracts based on "sunny day" demos, only to receive deliverables that don't match the sales pitch. By the time the gap is visible, the budget is spent and the vendor is already pitching the next county over.

This pattern is repeatable, but it’s also preventable. The following seven questions won't guarantee you pick the perfect partner, but they will ensure the wrong vendor has nowhere to hide.

1. Why are you pushing for a sole-source procurement?
Sole-source contracts are for genuine emergencies and truly singular inventions—not for an emerging category with dozens of hungry providers. When a vendor lobbies hard for a sole-source designation, they aren't trying to save you time; they’re trying to avoid a side-by-side comparison. Innovation doesn't fear competition. If a vendor can’t win an open RFP, they’ll try to use "existing relationships" or artificial urgency to bypass one. Write a broad RFP. Let them earn the win.

2. What are your actual hardware uptime statistics?
Hardware fails. Cameras go down. GPS locks drop. Software pipelines break. Any vendor operating in the field has uptime data. Ask for it specifically. If your vendor responds to an uptime question with miles driven, images captured, or parcels processed, they have answered a different question than the one you asked. That is not an accident. Demand the percentage of scheduled operational time the system was actually functioning and delivering data. You are evaluating a data company. If it cannot produce basic reliability data about its own operations, you should ask what else it is not measuring — and what else it is not telling you.

3. Is this hardware rated for our specific environment?
A system that works in San Diego will choke in a Marquette, Michigan winter or a Desert Hot Springs August. Vague talk about "proprietary sensors" isn't a specification. Demand the thermal ratings.

Be careful: a camera housing rated for 150°F is not the same as a camera that functions at 150°F. Solar loading—the heat from direct sunlight—drives internal temperatures far higher than the ambient air. A vendor who can’t explain the difference between ambient rating and operational thermal performance has likely never deployed in a real-world climate like yours.

4. Who owns the data after the ink is dry?
This is the most revealing question you can ask. Street-level imagery contains a goldmine of data on your residents, properties, and public spaces. That data is valuable to insurance carriers, hedge funds, and third-party developers.

Ask three things: Who owns the raw imagery? Can the vendor use your city's data for their own product development or third-party licensing? And what happens when the contract ends—do they delete the data, or do they keep a "residual" copy? Demand these rights be enshrined in the contract itself, not tucked away in a "Terms of Service" link that can be changed with a mouse click.

5. Are you charging us to access our own information?
Watch out for "per-seat" or "per-department" licensing. It’s a common revenue tactic: The city pays for the data capture, but the vendor retains the keys. Suddenly, Public Works, Planning, and Code Enforcement are all paying separate fees to look at the same image of the same street—all captured on the taxpayer's dime.

Before signing, demand unrestricted, city-wide access. If a vendor claims per-seat licensing is "industry standard," remind them that the standard should serve the city, not the vendor's recurring revenue goals.

6. Can we see your entire client list?
Vendors always provide three happy references. Those contacts are often "power users" who get special treatment. Ask for the full list of every city they’ve worked with in the last three years. Then, call the cities they didn't suggest. Ask them: Did the vendor hit their deadlines? Was the data messy? Would you sign that contract again? The vendor who refuses to share their full client list has already given you their most honest answer.

7. What does the "bad day" data look like?
Demos show the best-case scenario. You need to see the typical case. Request sample deliverables from actual production runs—not curated pilots. What does the imagery look like in a dense urban canyon, during a rainstorm, or on a road under construction? What is the error rate on parcel attribution? A vendor with a mature product will answer this easily; a vendor with "vaporware" will try to change the subject.

A Final Note on AI
Every vendor will use the word "AI" like a magic wand. Treat it as a red flag that you need more specificity, not less. Ask what the models were trained on and who audits their accuracy. AI is a capability, not a guarantee of truth.

The cities that find the most value in these platforms are the ones that demand proof of performance before they cut the check. At Placemetry, transparency and providing value to our cities is at the heart of our mission. We started our business because we want to help build better cities with better data. Contact us to chat and see how we can help your city.