The prevention of collisions is not guaranteed. Your drone will still need to compensate for wind and other flying conditions, and for other flying objects (including birds and other drones). There may be errors or inaccuracies in the data, based on the quality of the source data.
The PROWL system is not intended to prescribe a safe flight path. A defined flight corridor would not cover every direction that a drone could or would go, and would not allow for access to all areas (think deliveries and asset inspection). If all users of the system were flying in the same corridor, then the risk of collisions would increase. The PROWL system provides a reference of known hazards to avoid and plan around.
Drones fitted with on-board collision detection capabilities can still use the PROWL to assist with their flight planning. The PROWL system does not replace on-board detection and avoidance capabilities. If the drone is capable, the information that it gathers on a detected hazard can be fed back to the PROWL database. Fitting of on-board detection systems is a good idea, as it allows for detection of temporary hazards, such as birds and other drones, or objects that are not (yet) in the database.
The PROWL system is intended to provide multiple references to what might be the same physical object. A single building may have multiple hazard polygons that cover the physical object – including polygons that could have been sourced from a third party service, alongside data submitted by PROWL users. Your flight planning software will be able to interpret the multiple results to avoid the area.
The PROWL system is not a flight control system itself. It provides a reference that can be utilised by flight planning software for planning and routing purposes. There are multiple software solutions available to assist drones in planning their journey, and the PROWL service can be referenced by that software.
The PROWL system is not an air-traffic control system. Other solutions must be used to ensure that drones are not occupying the same airspace as other drones, aircraft that are on non-planned flightpaths (such as emergency services). The PROWL system will have mandatory exclusion zones around airports, and can reference filed flightplans of aircraft, but does not indicate clear paths or known positions of other aircraft (including other drones).
Websites and services provided by PROWL do not allow for object modelling, polygon vertex modification, reporting or graphical analysis. The PROWL database and services are designed to be simple and provide only a repository of hazard information.
For data that is obtained from 3rd party external sources, the data is simplified to only represent the external surfaces of the object, as 3D GPS coordinates. Other information about 3D objects such as textures, images, surface (such as windows) and internal features are all dropped. 3D objects that are obtained through PROWL that are external to the PROWL data are marked with the source/owner to allow higher fidelity data to be obtained from the source provider.