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E a r t h Re m o t e S e n s i n g
for Securit y
E n e r gy a n d
the Environment
Summer 2011
Vol. 26 No.3
Craters
Solar Maps
Google Earth
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i m a g i n g n o t es / / s u m m e r 2 0 1 1 / / w w w . i m a g i n g n o t es . c o m
2
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Copyright © 2011 Esri. All rights reserved. Imagery courtesy of GeoEye and DigitalGlobe.
Summer 2011
contents
> >D e p a r t m e n t s
6
Secure World
Foundation Forum
9
Guest Editorial
Orbital Debris
Mitigation
Tim Brown of
GlobalSecurity.org
Debates Value of
Satellites for
Human Rights
28
> >F e a t u r e s
14
Google Earth Builder
Advantages for
Businesses
By Matteo Luccio
17
Solar Map Focus
Infusions of
Regional Data
By Matthew Krusemark, Denver
Regional Council of Governments
22
Craters
Satellites Unearth
Missing Records
By Leonard David
28
Observing a
Volatile Earth
The Latest in
Imagery Analysis
By Karen Richardson, Esri
> >A d v e r t o r i a l
33
Esri Business
Partner Section
22
Featuring PCI Geomatics,
Topcon Positioning
Systems, and Océ
North America
6
i m a g i n g n o t es / / S u m m e r 2 0 1 1 / / w w w . i m a g i n g n o t es . c o m
3
U.N. Compound
in Sudan
cover image
The violence in Sudan is still
taking place, four years after our first story on
the humanitarian abuses there in our
Summer 2007 issue by Lars Bromley, then with
AAAS. Imaging Notes published in our Spring 2011
issue an article about the Satellite Sentinel Project,
launched in December to monitor troop buildup and
village destruction from satellites in the hopes of
mitigating further violence. Several credible NGOs
are involved, including the United Nations, Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative and the high-profile Enough
Project and Not On Our Watch, nonprofits with
which the actor George Clooney is involved. The
project is getting a lot of attention and seems to have
potential to create change.
In this issue, we share a Guest Editorial by
Tim Brown, an imagery analyst with
www.GlobalSecurity.org. He shares some
history on the use of imagery in foreign relations,
and debates the real value of using imagery to
actually stop violence. He contends that without
“boots on the ground,” conflicts are unlikely to
cease with just visual evidence. Read his editorial
on page 9.
In this image on the front cover, temporary shelters are shown of thousands of internally displaced
people (IDP) seeking refuge in the shadow of the
UN compound in Kadugli, South Kordofan, Sudan.
On the upper left of the image are at least 250
structures consistent with IDP camps. On the right
side are at least 55 additional structures.
Credit: DigitalGlobe for Satellite Sentinel
Project, taken June 17, 2011.
Summer 2011 / Vol. 26 / No. 3
Our Mission
Imaging Notes is the premier publication for commercial, government and academic
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4
5
Orbital Debris Mitigation Strategies
Collisions Increase; Explosions Decrease
Secure World Foundation Forum
The Earth is encircled with human-made orbital
flotsam. Space junk comes in all shapes and sizes, such as abandoned satellites
and leftover booster stages.
Discarded space hardware includes a variety of launch vehicle upper stages, left on
orbit after they are spent. Add to this mix abandoned spacecraft that are no longer functioning. Toss in for good measure separation bolts, lens caps, momentum flywheels, nuclear
reactor cores, clamp bands, auxiliary motors, launch vehicle fairings, and adapter shrouds.
Given hypervelocity speeds in space,
example, deployment procedures can be
even the most minuscule of rubbish could
designed to prevent ejection of objects. Tethcreate havoc on impact with a functioning
ered lens caps and bolt catchers for explosive
satellite.
bolts are examples of preventive design.
As of today, on-orbit explosions
To avert explosions, space hardware that
have been the primary source of debris.
stores energy can be passivated at the end
Explosions can occur when propellant
of its useful life. Passivation is a practice of
and oxidizer inadvertently mix, residual
ridding a spent rocket stage of any residual
propellant becomes over-pressurized due
stored energy left on-board, typically taking
to heating, or batteries become overthe form of venting leftover propellants or
pressurized. See Figure 1 .
pressurants, or controlled discharging of any
batteries or momentum wheels.
What’s Passivation?
According to The Aerospace CorporaWhile the threat of orbital debris to
tion’s Center for Orbital and Reentry
operating spacecraft is very real, there are
Debris Studies, “As the debris mitigation
encouraging steps being taken by many
measure of passivation becomes more
spacefaring companies and countries. For
commonly practiced, it is expected that
explosions will decrease in frequency. It
may take a few decades for the practice
to become implemented widely enough to
reduce the explosion rate, which currently
stands at about four per year.”
Leonard David
By
Research Associate
Secure World Foundation
www.secureworldfoundation.org
Lengthy History
Underscored in a report issued earlier
this year by the U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
there is a lengthy history of trying to curb
orbital debris. As pointed out in DARPA’s
Catcher’s Mitt Final Report, to help
control the future growth of orbital debris,
most spacefaring nations have adopted
measures to limit the creation of new
orbital debris.
In 1995 NASA was the first space
agency in the world to issue a comprehen-
sive set of orbital debris mitigation guidelines. Two years later, the U.S. Government developed a set of Orbital Debris
Mitigation Standard Practices based on
the NASA guidelines. Other countries and
organizations, including Japan, France,
Russia, and the European Space Agency
(ESA) have followed suit with their own
orbital debris mitigation guidelines.
In 2002, after a multi-year effort, the
Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination
Committee (IADC), comprised of the
space agencies of 10 countries as well
as ESA, adopted a consensus set of
guidelines designed to mitigate the growth
of the orbital debris population.
In February 2007, the Scientific and
Technical Subcommittee of the United
Nations’ Committee on the Peaceful Uses
of Outer Space (COPUOS) completed a
multi-year work plan with the adoption of a
consensus set of Space Debris Mitigation
Guidelines very similar to the IADC guidelines. The guidelines were accepted by the
COPUOS in June 2007 and endorsed by
the United Nations in January 2008.
Currently accepted mitigation
measures include limiting the use of
explosive bolts and other disposable
deployment mechanisms, limiting orbital
lifetimes of retired payloads and spent
rocket bodies to 25 years, and venting
unused propellant at the end of operations.
While the United Nations 2008 Report
on Space Debris discusses these guidelines’ contribution to a slower growth in
the space debris population, “these efforts
have only slowed the overall growth in the
amount of space debris, not halted it,” the
DARPA report states. “To date, on-orbit
explosions have been the primary source
of debris. Nevertheless, collisions are
expected to be the leading source within
6
debris from a launcher perspective:
›› passivate the orbital stages;
›› leave low Earth orbit stages in short-
1
SS F ig u r e 1. Upper stage rocket explodes,
spewing out chunks of debris. Credit:
European Space Agency.
the next few decades.”
In June of last year, the Obama administration issued a National Space Policy that
among many other things requires the United
States to “lead the continued development
and adoption of international and industry
standards and policies to minimize debris,
such as the United Nations Space Debris
Mitigation Guidelines … pursue research
and development of technologies and techniques, through the Administrator of NASA
and the Secretary of Defense, mitigate and
remove on-orbit debris, reduce hazards, and
increase understanding of the current and
future debris environment.”
The French Connection
Dutifully aware of the menacing problem
of orbital debris – and not contributing to an
already cluttered situation – is French launch
provider, Arianespace. It was founded in
1980 as the world’s first satellite launch
company. Since its creation, the enterprise
has chalked up a notable roster of boosting
spacecraft for a variety of nations.
The spaceport used by Arianespace –
also known as the Guiana Space Center
– is a strategically-located facility in French
Guiana. That locale makes it ideally situated
for missions into geostationary orbit. The
technical performance of its launch vehicles
and a substantial order book have made
Arianespace the world leader in satellite
launch services for the last few years, with a
market share exceeding 60 percent.
“Arianespace takes the issue of orbital
debris mitigation seriously and actively
works with the French Government to
ensure that our launch systems respect
international agreements whose goal is
to reduce space debris,” said Clayton
Mowry, President of Arianespace, Inc., with
responsibility for managing Arianespace’s
customer, industry and governmental relations at the company’s U.S. affiliate.
Mowry told Imaging Notes that under
the French Space Operation Act and
policy, Arianespace authorization to
proceed for each mission and with each
launch system is associated with mission
optimization strategies that take into
account debris mitigation planning.
The latest version of the Ariane 5
booster is called the Ariane 5 ECA, for
Cryogenic Evolution type A. This powerful
launch system is qualified to use the
propellant tanks’ residual pressure and
altitude control systems to lower the
upper stage apogee altitude prior to a
final passivation procedure, Mowry noted.
“This practice prevents the upper stage
from crossing into the geostationary region
populated by communications satellites.”
Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for
Orbital Debris at the NASA Johnson Space
Center in Houston, Texas flags the most
important actions to mitigate the growth of
lived orbits, e.g., orbits from which they
will re-enter within 25 years.
“Both of these actions are recommended by the IADC and the UN. Some
launch service providers do a good job in
both areas; some do not,” Johnson told
Imaging Notes.
Johnson spotlighted the recent June
launch of Aquarius SAC-D. The Aquarius
mission is the first satellite mission
specifically designed to provide monthly
global measurements of how sea water
salinity varies at the ocean surface, and was
developed in an international partnership
with Argentina’s space agency, Comisión
Nacional de Actividades Espaciales. “For
the SAC-D mission, the Delta 2 second
stage performed a depletion maneuver that
moved the stage from an orbit with a lifetime
of more than 20 years to one with a lifetime
of only a month or two,” Johnson said.
The primary focus of the Secure World
Foundation is on space sustainability – the
ability of all humanity to continue to use
outer space for peaceful purposes and
socioeconomic benefit over the long term.
Indeed, unsafe or irresponsible actions
by one actor can have long-term adverse
consequences for all.
Given the growth of using outer space
by an increasing number of governmental
and non-governmental actors, steps to
deal with the worrisome issue of orbital
debris – today and into the future – are
welcome news. That being said, there
are many more steps that must be taken
to tackle this environmental problem of
humankind’s own making.
7
OCT. 16-19
San Antonio, Texas
Register NOW
and SAVE!
http://geoint2011.com/registration
The eighth annual GEOINT Symposium returns to San Antonio!
The United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation invites you to the
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in one of the GEOINT Symposium’s
favorite cities, San Antonio, TX, for GEOINT 2011. The GEOINT Symposium will
capture your interest with intriguing keynotes, panels and breakout tracks
from the Defense, Intelligence and Homeland Security Communities’ most
prominent leaders. In the 100,000-square foot exhibit hall attendees and
exhibitors alike can learn about current trends and innovations. GEOINT 2011
also promises invaluable networking opportunities throughout the
day and during evening reception events. Mark your calendar for
Oct. 16-19 because you won’t want to miss out on this must-attend event.
Attend GEOINT 2011 and hear from these Community leaders …
Gen. Keith B. Alexander, U.S. Army
Commander, U.S. Cyber Command
Director, National Security Agency
Ms. Letitia A. Long
Director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Mr. Bruce Carlson
Director, National Reconnaissance Office
The Honorable Michael G. “Mike” Vickers
Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
The Honorable James R. Clapper Jr.
Director of National Intelligence
Adm. James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld Jr., U.S. Navy
Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command
Commander, United States Northern Command
Gen. Douglas Fraser, U.S. Air Force
Commander, U.S. Southern Command
Rep. Rogers, Chairman,
HPSCI, and Rep.
Ruppersberger, Ranking
Member, HPSCI, will provide
a joint keynote. Don’t miss
Congressman
this opportunity to see two
i m a C.A.
g i n gDutch
n o t es
/ / s u m m e r 2 0 1 0 / / w w w . i m a g i n g n o t es . c o m
Ruppersberger
key decision-makers share
Maryland, 2nd District
their knowledge.
Congressman Mike Rogers
Michigan, 8th District
Gen. C. Robert “Bob” Kehler, U.S. Air Force
Commander, U.S. Strategic Command
8
www.geoint2011.com
Where Our National Security Begins…
@GEOINTSymposium
See highlights from GEOINT 2010 at www.geointv.com
Satellites for Human Rights
Can They Stop Genocide?
Guest Editorial
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” – Plato
The Satellite Sentinel Project is the latest example of how the powerful tool
of commercial satellite imagery, and the analysis that goes with it, can be used
(www.satsentinel.org). Previous efforts to use high-resolution, space-based imagery to
raise awareness and document war crimes, while admirable, have yielded mixed results.
Overhead imagery in 1995 showing mass graves in Bosnia did little to stop the
“ethnic cleansing” as it was taking place. Madeleine Albright, then Secretary of State,
even showed at a hearing on Capitol Hill declassified photos of the disturbed earth in
northern Bosnia that provided evidence of mass graves outside the one U.N.-protected
enclave of Srebrenica. In the end, the U.S. and the European Community did not
intervene until an estimated 200,000 people were killed – 8,000 in Srebrenica alone.
Tim Brown
by
Senior Fellow
Washington, D.C.
www.globalsecurity.org
In 2004, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), under
the auspices of the Department of State,
purchased commercial satellite imagery to
document and to show the scale of violence
taking place in the Darfur region of southern
Sudan. The Amnesty International project
Eyes on Darfur (www.eyesondarfur.org)
attempted to monitor the violence in Darfur,
as well, in 2007. In May 2006, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS) released a study using commercial
satellite imagery showing destroyed villages
in Zimbabwe. See Figures 1-2. Five years
later, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe is
still in power.
In 2004, there was hesitancy in the
U.S. even to use the word ‘genocide’ in
reference to Sudan, as that word carried
with it a legal requirement for governmental
and moral action. Yet the word was used to
describe what was going on in Darfur, and
there was no real action. Four years later in
2009-10, the International Criminal Court
issued the warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Ahmad al Bashir on ten
counts — for torture, rape, crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and genocide. Yet
even today he is still in power.
If the recent arrest of the former
Yugoslav military commander Ratko
Mladic is any indication, it can take some
time to bring perpetrators of war crimes
to justice. It was 16 years before Mladic,
who orchestrated the slaughter of the
8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, was caught.
His lawyers are fighting on the grounds
that he is too weak with a medical
condition for trial. It may be years before
the current perpetrators of war crimes
and genocide in Sudan are captured and
brought to justice, if indeed they ever are.
If anything can be deduced from the
civil war and “ethnic cleansing” carried
out against Muslim minorities of Bosnia
and Kosovo by the Yugoslav leaders in the
1990s, it would be that there was a whole
body of collateral information that crimes
against humanity and genocide were taking
place, yet the ability to detect and charact-
erize those activities was not sufficient to
move Europe and the West to act.
There are limits to what this technology
can do. Hollywood has created unrealistic
expectations among the public, policy
makers and celebrities. The public has been
fascinated ever since the words ‘spy satellite’ were first uttered in 1968 in the movie
Ice Station Zebra, starring Rock Hudson.
Since then, overhead imaging capabilities
have been wildly exaggerated, especially in
the movie Enemy of the State in 1998.
A Brief History Lesson
In 1979, famed CIA imagery analyst
Dino Brugioni revealed the existence of
aerial imagery of the Auschwitz death
camp, accidentally captured on aerial strike
camera film from allied bombers attacking
the nearby I.G. Farben Plant, over thirty
years earlier (see Figure 3 ). Since the 1979
article, there has grown an expectation
that overhead imagery can be used to
detect war crimes, and once detected, the
war crimes will stop or be forced to stop,
or at least the imagery could be used as
part of the body of evidence to bring the
perpetrators to justice.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis of
1962, Adlai Stevenson, U.S. Ambassador
to the United Nations, faced off against
his counterpart, Soviet representative
Valerian Zorin in the Security Council,
over the issue of the introduction of
offensive ballistic missiles in Cuba. Aerial
imagery depicting the construction of
Notes: This editorial is in response to the article, “Satellite Sentinel Project” from the
Editor’s
Spring 2011 issue. Tim Brown is an imagery analyst and Senior Fellow at Globalsecurity.org. The
opinions expressed here are solely his own. This information is accurate as of the date of this
writing, June 9, 2011. Also see editorial by Dino Brugioni in the Spring 2007 issue, and the feature
about human rights issues in Zimbabwe and Sudan in Summer 2007. These can easily be found
by keyword search at www.imagingnotes.com/archive.
9
2
Guest Editorial
1
WW F ig u r e 1. Porta Farm, Zimbabwe before the area was
demolished, taken June 22, 2002. Images are part of a AAAS
report that was previously published in the Summer 2007 issue
of Imaging Notes, and are courtesy of DigitalGlobe.
SS F ig u r e 2 . Porta Farm image after destruction, taken April 6,
2006. Image courtesy of DigitalGlobe.
offensive ballistic missile bases was
shown, to counter Soviet denials about
the deployment. In the end, the U.S.
imposed a “quarantine” – essentially a
military blockade – of the island. The
Soviets backed down, and the missiles
were withdrawn. Overhead imagery, it
seemed, won the day, forcing the Soviets
to withdraw.
It did not hurt that the U.S. had an
overwhelming nuclear superiority, or that
there were conventional forces ready to
strike Cuba militarily, with an invasion force
of U.S. troops standing by, or that a fleet
of U.S. naval vessels were ready to sink
Soviet merchant vessels bound for Cuba.
In addition, President Kennedy secretly
agreed to withdraw the U.S. medium-range
ballistic missile from Turkey. So it was the
threat of the use of force, along with covert
negotiations, that ultimately caused the
Soviets to change their minds. The overhead imagery was useful but not critical.
Setbacks in the Use of Imagery
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the high
point in which overhead (aerial) imagery
was credibly used to prove a point in
foreign relations, and a high point as well
in U.S. international credibility. Since
then, using imagery has gradually lost its
effectiveness.
In 1983, President Reagan displayed
aerial imagery of military arms shipments
and deployments in Nicaragua and Cuba
to boost public support for the “Contras”
and the overthrow of the Sandinista regime
in Managua. The military buildup was nonnuclear in nature and not capable of directly
threatening the United States.
A more recent example is when, in
2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell
10
displayed a simulated vial of
anthrax, and showed overhead
imagery of activity suggesting
ongoing Iraqi chemical and
biological weapons activity.
It later turned out that Iraq
had neither a chemical nor a
biological weapons program.
The single Iraqi source codenamed “Curveball” fabricated
his story to West German
intelligence in hopes that the
U.S. would invade Iraq1. The
imagery and Powell’s personal
credibility helped convince
skeptics that a second Iraqi war
was justified.
Increased use of this type of
“brief occasion of amazement,”
as Carl Sagan said, combined
with the increased cynicism of
Americans and other people of
the world, has dulled overhead
imagery’s usefulness over time.
Summary
How much evidence is
required to detect and demon2
strate violence in significant
enough levels to cause the
SS F ig u r e 2 . Aerial reconnaissance imagery of Auschwitz
International Community and
showing the gas chambers and crematorium revealed in
the United Nations to act?
1979, courtesy of National Archives, via Dino Brugioni.
High-resolution overhead
imagery is best used to detect,
from the ground. Overhead imagery alone
identify, and characterize activity in denieddoes not seem to move public opinion, nor
access areas. Since there is an abundance
does it cause the perpetrators to stop, nor
of ”ground truth” of what is going on in
the International Community and the United
Sudan, from journalists and non-governNations to act.
mental aid and human rights organizations
The fundamental question is whether
showing dead bodies, burned villages, and
documenting ongoing war crimes and
people suffering in refugee camps, satellite
genocide for later use in court has any
imagery can do little more than provide a
effect on the behavior of perpetrators. So
context to the imagery that is hard to get
far, it doesn’t seem to.
Deterring killing and genocide in the
disputed regions of Sudan is a noble cause,
but it is a daunting task to dedicate satellite
imagery collection time to monitor an area
larger than the state of Texas. At a speed
of four miles per second, these satellites
are pre-programmed to point and click at
areas already identified by people on the
ground reporting killing. Instead of satellites
discovering new knowledge, they are more
often than not used to illustrate what is
already known.
Persistent staring (observation) from
11
Guest Editorial
The fundamental
question
is whether
documenting
ongoing war
crimes and
genocide for
later use in court
has any effect
on the behavior
of perpetrators.
So far, it doesn’t
seem to.
a variety of platforms such as commercial
high-resolution imaging satellites, aerostat
balloons, and unmanned drones is useful
only with “boots on the ground.” International Peacekeepers are needed, with a
mandate to protect life and property and
to stop the violence. The Satellite Sentinel
Project as currently envisioned does not
have boots on the ground to go with it.
The goal of documenting violence, war
crimes and genocide to prosecute is more
attainable. This action is akin to crime
scene investigators who show up after
a murder has been committed to collect
evidence and create a documentary
chain of evidence to be used later in a
trial. Using satellite imagery and analysis
to document war crimes presumes that
some of the perpetrators will be caught
and brought to justice.
George Clooney and other celebrities
have lent their good names and money to
raise international awareness about the
killing going on in Sudan2. Mr. Clooney
has actually been to refugee camps on
the borders of Sudan enough times that
his trips cannot be dismissed as mere
photo-ops. He has provided substantial
financial support and personal commitment
to the Satellite Sentinel Project and has the
support of other celebrities.
The satellite company DigitalGlobe has
made available to the effort its constellation of high-resolution imaging satellites.
Harvard University’s Humanitarian Initiative,
the groups Not On Our Watch and Enough
Project, co-founded by John Prendergast,
along with Amnesty International, scholars,
organizers, and activists, have made the
violence, war crimes and genocide in
Sudan hard to ignore. The United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees and
the United Nations UNITAR Operational
Satellite Applications Program (UNOSAT),
along with the International Criminal Court,
which has handed down indictments, all
send a strong message that war crimes and
genocide in Sudan will not go unnoticed,
and hopefully not unpunished.
The question is whether Mr. Clooney,
the satellite companies, prosecutors,
scholars, and human rights activists can
raise public awareness to a sufficient level
to pressure the U.S., the West, and the
International Community to act in time to
stop more violence in Sudan, or at least
not to interfere in a U.N.-mandated peace
enforcement. The answer lies in a highly
complex international process requiring
cooperation and commitment that, at this
point, have not been possible.
Part of that complexity is that the
Sudanese ethnic minorities occupy land
where the government wants to drill oil to
sell to countries like China. The current
Sudanese government does not want
to share profits with Southern Sudan,
though they will have to, once the south is
independent. Also, China holds a seat on
the U.N. Security Council, and could veto
any vote to send in troops.
In its present form, the Satellite
Sentinel Project can actually do little to
deter violence or stop aggression. To do
that, governments, not satellite companies
and celebrities, must act by putting troops
on the ground and using force if necessary to stop the actions and deter further
violence. Satellites watching genocide
being committed and reporting after the
fact is a relatively inexpensive proposition,
but may also be ineffective. Whether
the Satellite Sentinel Project can raise
enough awareness to cause governments
to act is an open question.
Footnotes
1.Normally, intelligence agencies prefer to rely on multiple sources of information before
they are willing to write “finished intelligence.” U.S. intelligence agencies had no
opportunity to interview the Iraqi source, had no collateral information and found his
claims unreliable. Secretary of State Colin Powell went out of his way to ensure that the
information he was given was accurate. Yet he was not careful enough. Had he known
about the CIA doubts or the fact that agency personnel did not have a chance to interview
“Curveball,” he no doubt would have left that material out of his U.N. presentation.
2.The group Not On Our Watch was founded by Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Matt Damon,
Brad Pitt, David Pressman, and Jerry Weintraub.
12
July 24-29, 2011, Vancouver, Canada
Beyond the Frontiers: Expanding our Knowledge of the World
Welcome!
Because of the March earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan, the
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) and the IGARSS 2011
team jointly decided to move IGARSS 2011 to Vancouver, Canada.
Please join us at the Vancouver Convention Center July 25 - July 29 for
IGARSS 2011. Check our website (www.igarss11.org) for up-to-date
information on the technical program, the venue, hotels, and the social
program.
We look forward to welcoming you in Vancouver!
Jon Atli Benediktsson
President, IEEE GRSS
Motoyuki Sato
General Chair, IGARSS 2011
13
Photo Credits:
Tourism Vancouver
Capilano Suspension Bridge
Tourism Vancouver / Tom Ryan
Vancouver
G o o g le E a r t h , l au n c h e d s i x y e a r s ag o, e x pa n d e d by o r d e r s
of magnitude the market for geospatial technologies. The initial 3D viewer
was supplemented over time by driving directions, sky and flight simulator
modes, street view, bathymetry, historical imagery, and other features. It evolved
into a full-fledged enterprise mapping and GIS platform and was widely adopted
across the geosciences and other scientific disciplines, as well as for a variety of
business and government applications.
Now Google is productizing the processing infrastructure it has developed for
Google Earth and Google Maps, together with the power of its massive server
farms, by launching Google Earth Builder. The new platform, which it announced
at the Where 2.0 conference in April and has scheduled for release in Q3 of this
year, will make Google’s back-end geospatial capabilities available to enterprise
users – business customers.
1
What It Is and What It Does
Matteo Luccio
by
Writer
Portland, Ore.
www.palebluedotllc.com
Note: Imaging Notes regularly
Editor’s
asks image processing companies to
share their most up-to-date offerings, as
you see here, as Esri does on page 28, and
as Hexagon/ERDAS did in the Spring 2011
issue. More to come!
SS F ig u r e 1. Thumbnail view of uploaded
mapping data in a Google Earth Builder
Google Earth Builder is a cloudaccount
computing platform that enables organizations to upload and manage all their
geospatial data, create custom layers, and share them with staff to view on Google
Earth and Google Maps. According to Google, the application will support spikes in
user traffic — such as during a disaster response — and significantly reduce IT costs,
by automatically scaling as needed and updating software and servers. “Google’s cloud
scales to handle different scenarios and lets organizations focus more on building
maps and less on managing on-premise hardware,” says Dylan Lorimer, Google Earth
Builder’s product manager.
The platform will also enable organizations to set attribution on custom map
layers and share access to the data without sharing the raw data files. It will let
them process and publish large geospatial data files, access Google’s extensive
basemap of imagery, roads, and points of interest, and create custom map layers
for Google Earth and Google Maps. As one would expect from a Google product,
Google Earth Builder also provides users with a lot of metrics as to who is viewing
their data.
Google Earth Builder will enable users to view maps from desktop and mobile platforms, share them with individuals and groups, and visually analyze geospatial data
without requiring GIS training. In most cases, however, for the foreseeable future,
Google Earth Builder will store and catalog geospatial data files (shapefiles, TAB, Mr.
SID, JPG2000, TIFF, KML, etc.) that were created using Esri GIS software. Users upload
14
the files via a catalog interface, which
allows them to enter layer names, attribution, tags, source, and other metadata.
The application automatically extracts
this metadata and indexes the files for
quick search. Users can upload raw satellite imagery and perform masking, edge
matching, some color balancing, and
“feathering” of the tiles in order to create
a seamless image map. “The user doesn’t
have to make many decisions, but there
are a few knobs and dials,” says Lorimer.
The application also supports vector
data and allows users to create and
manipulate map layers and style them
dynamically to create thematic maps.
“We create a spatial table in the cloud,
which we manage,” Lorimer says. “You
can define a style to create attributes and
specify levels of details and cartographic
rules. Maps can be rendered on the fly, in
either a KLM layer or as raster tiles to be
displayed on top of Google Maps. Users
define one or more styles and marry them
with the vectors. For example, you might
display parcels for Montana in different
ways on a Web site or on a tablet.”
Google Earth Builder allows users to
publish their data in three ways: directly
to a Google Earth client, through Web
Map Services (WMS), and in Google
Earth and Google Maps API for developers to access. As Google continues
to increase its investments in geospatial
technology — for example, through its
Google Earth Engine image classification project — it will probably make
more of it available through Google
Earth Builder.
the pricing structure, he explains Google
Maps Premier starts at $20,000 when you
bundle vector data storage. “Google Earth
Builder will start at a slightly higher price
point, but will include more storage and
page-view quota,” he says. It will be based
on the quantity of data plus the amount
of map consumption — for example,
whether the maps are only for internal use
or embedded on Web sites. “As we look
to productize more of our technology, for
example 3D models, we have to figure out
how it fits into our pricing model.”
By launching Google Earth Builder,
Lorimer says, Google is making it
easier for organizations to build and
publish maps as well as productizing
its core competencies, in response to
persistent requests from its customers
to make the mapping infrastructure it
has built available to them. “It has been
fairly difficult for organizations to build
maps,” he says. “They have needed
complicated, on-premise solutions. We
want to make it easy for them. We hope
that organizations that are starting will
consider using the cloud for mapping.
The mission of Google Earth Builder
is to take the innovation we have built
into our consumer products and make
it available to businesses.”
Google will provide both standard
and premium support to users of Google
Earth Builder through its Google Enterprise program, as well as online documentation and contextual help, code
snippets and examples, a user group,
and two yearly user conferences.
Quality Control and Improvements
Pricing Structure
Google’s announcement of Google
Earth Builder focused on two initial
clients, both of which are very large organizations: Ergon Energy, a utility company
owned by the government of the Australian state of Queensland, and the U.S.
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
(NGA). “However, the cloud scales,”
says Lorimer. “If we did our job right, the
product will suit the needs of the smallest
to the largest organizations.” Regarding
To help ensure the quality of the data
uploaded, the data catalog is accesscontrolled. Google then performs some
limited quality control. “We strive to do
the heavy lifting, but are not trying to fix
your data,” Lorimer says. “We will not
rectify or fix data, but we will notify our
users of any errors we see.” Publishing
has a completely separate set of access
controls.
Cloud technology will allow Google
to quickly share improvements with all
users of Google Earth Builder. “We can
hear from a customer about a feature
request and we can implement it and
make the innovation available almost
at the speed of browser refresh,” says
Lorimer.
Image Processing and Spatial
Analysis
One of the data pipelines that is available at the push of a button, Lorimer
explains, is massive image processing,
whether one image or thousands, gigabytes
2
SS F ig u r e 2 . Blended imagery tiles processed by Google
Earth Builder and shown in the Google Earth Plugin
or petabytes. “As a user, you can get access
to Google’s infrastructure of thousands of
machines, with no set-up required. We will
have customers that will have a tremendous amount of imagery; they will not
need to provision any additional hardware;
it will scale automatically.” However, it is
not clear whether this will speed up image
processing, compared to software and
services that are already available.
For most users, Google Earth Builder
will not replace GIS any time soon, due
to its limited ability to perform spatial
analysis and geoprocessing. “Right now,
we are not exposing any standard vector
analytical operations beyond spatially
constrained search,” says Lorimer. “We
want to provide all the useful mechanisms
you may need to access and make use of
your data. The goal is to expose all of our
infrastructure for enterprise use.”
15
The NGA’s Adoption of Google Earth
Builder
The NGA contract with Google is one
of the first major government geospatial
cloud initiatives. For four years, the NGA
has been using Google Earth Enterprise to
build globes and related products, under
a program called GEOINT Visualization Services (GVS), according to Daniel
Vernon, a technical executive with the
agency’s Acquisition Engineering Office.
GVS operates on three of the network
levels the NGA supports, he explains.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff asked the NGA
to expand GVS to an enterprise-level
solution, called Geospatial Visualization - Enterprise Services (GV-ES). “With
GV-ES and the ever-increasing volume of
users that can consume Open Geospatial Consortium-compliant Web services
such as WMS and WMTS, and be able
to export the products produced with
Google Earth Builder for use on the classified networks.”
“Google Earth Builder is one of the
core elements of the GV-ES architecture,”
Vernon explains, “and allows the NGA
to produce globes and services at a much
faster, more time-relevant rate. In addition
to the NGA geospatial analysts, our partners also benefit from our provisioning of
globes, maps, and OGC services to include
organizations that provide humanitarian
assistance, disaster response and relief, as
well as federal, Department of Defense,
and intelligence agencies.”
amounts of imagery that they are
acquiring through digital aerial photography by replacing on-premise servers
with Google’s cloud. In addition, it
will allow them to push their data to
this platform while keeping it publicly
open, rather than waiting for Google to
update its data.
Google Earth Builder’s limited analytical capabilities do not make it a substitute for GIS for any organization that
requires complex geographical analysis.
Nor will its floor pricing make it affordable for small businesses. Perhaps a good
private sector candidate for adopting
Google Earth Builder would be a real
estate developer who needs to store and
manage large amounts of aerial photo-
3
4
raster and vector data,” says Vernon, “the
NGA needs greater capacity now and in
the future to build and provision globes
and related products. We have reached
the limits of what we can do to build 2D
and 3D products using the Google Earth
Enterprise software we presently use.”
Such visualization and ease of access is in
alignment with NGA Director Tish Long’s
vision for the agency.
“In addition,” Vernon continues,
“while the NGA has been serving
customers on the classified networks, we
have the increasing need to provide this
same capability on unclassified networks.
We therefore began using Google Earth
Builder to build, provision, and serve
products that will support Google Earth,
Google Maps, and Google Earth plug-in
users. The NGA will also be able to serve
SS F ig u r es 3 - 4 . Dynamically rendered vector tiles streamed by Google Earth Builder and shown
on Google Maps. Figure 3 is Portland, Oregon. Figure 4 shows Europe.
“Once our customers start using
the product and services the NGA will
provide from Google Earth Builder,”
Vernon concludes, “it will be their
comments to NGA that will most influence where we go with this capability.
Our customers have shown a lot of
imagination in using the capabilities we
have offered thus far under GVS, which
will continue to expand under GV-ES.”
Benefits
Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries
of Google Earth Builder will be state
and local governments, who will save
considerably on storing the massive
graphy and use it to create simple maps
for use in assessing the suitability of sites
for various uses. Google Earth Builder
would save the company on the cost of
training its staff in GIS and in buying
and maintaining large servers on which
to store the imagery.
Google Earth Builder will also give
governments and companies access to
the massive amount of data Google has
already collected for Google Maps and
Google Earth (including 3D images of
landscapes), let them combine it with
their own data, and allow them to
publish it in an interface now familiar
to millions of people.
16
Infusions of Regional Data
Th e De n ve r Reg ional Sol ar
Map is a Web-based application
the Denver Regional Council of
Governments (DRCOG) developed with
funding from a New Energy Economic
Development grant through the Colorado
Governor’s Energy Office. DRCOG began
developing the site in March 2010 and
launched in November 2010. The application lets users easily locate their properties
and explore the benefits of solar photovoltaic (PV) installation through a simple
address search for their buildings.
In addition, it allows local solar
installers in the Denver region login
access to respond to consumer inquiries.
DRCOG’s initial hopes were that the
project would not only bolster adoption of
renewable energy in the Denver region, but
also create jobs by connecting local solar
providers and contractors with building
owners. Installers have been actively using
the site to respond to consumer inquiries.
Importance of Regional Data
Collaboration
The Denver metropolitan area encompasses over 5,000 square miles making it a challenge to find
contiguous, detailed geospatial data to support the solar map
needs (see Figure 1). In order to accurately calculate solar PV
potential for buildings in the region, DRCOG needed several
key datasets to support the application, including digital
orthophotography for feature and building identification,
LiDAR to quickly identify rooftop obstructions on buildings that would potentially inhibit solar PV panel placement,
and building footprints where LiDAR information might not
exist.
DRCOG has a long history of collaboration that includes
56 member governments (local municipalities and counties)
and other regional, state and federal agency partners in the
region. One area of collaboration in the last decade has been
in the development of regional geospatial data to support
SS F ig u r e 1. DRCOG’s map of the Denver region shows DRAPP area and
LiDAR coverage.
Matthew Krusemark, GISP
By
Information Services Manager
Denver Regional Council of Governments
Denver, Colo.
www.drcog.gov
Note A feature article about Democratic National
Editor’s
Convention security, by the same author from DRCOG, appeared in
the Spring 2009 issue of Imaging Notes.
17
long-range planning and current and future transportation investments. The Denver Regional Aerial Photography
Project (DRAPP) has become the de facto regional base map
with which many agency’s spatial data is often referenced,
including transportation, property ownership (parcels) and
land use/zoning, to name a few.
The DRAPP project operates on a two-year cycle and is
usually made up of a consortium of 40+ members, making
the approximately 1 million dollar project affordable to
2
Partnerships and Economies of Scale
DRCOG partnered with Woolpert, Inc. (Dayton, Ohio) to
develop a feature extraction methodology to identify rooftop
obstructions to solar PV placement on buildings within the
LiDAR project area. Woolpert was able to utilize DRAPP
imagery, DNC LiDAR and local agency building footprints to
create an automated feature extraction process that mapped
rooftop obstructions for all 512,000+ buildings.
Outside the LiDAR project area, DRCOG developed
3
all the partners involved. In addition to DRAPP, a Denver
Regional Data Consortium (DRDC) was founded in 2009
to foster regional data development beyond the DRAPP
imagery effort that could be used in regional software decision-making applications like the Denver Regional Solar
Map and others. These additional DRDC-developed datasets
include transportation, open space, and the built environment (categories of building types, number of building floors
and addresses, for example).
The DRAPP imagery provided the base map for the solar
mapping effort. In 2008, LiDAR was collected to support
emergency planning for the Democratic National Convention
(DNC, an article about which appeared in the Spring 2009
issue of Imaging Notes) through additional partnerships that
included local, regional and federal government agencies and
made publicly available after the DNC event by the United
States Geological Survey (USGS) NSDI Partnership Office.
DRCOG acquired DRAPP imagery in the spring of 2008. The
summer 2008 LiDAR acquisition covered the densest portions
of the built environment in the region which is made up of
512,000+ buildings. However, the LiDAR acquisition area
only encompassed approximately 20 percent of the geographic
land area of the region making it necessary to reach out to
local governments to fill in those gaps with building footprints they had already developed. The local governments and
DRDC partners in the Denver region provided an additional
306,000+ building footprints to fill the gaps.
4
in-house algorithms that calculate a more generalized solar
estimation for those areas that only had building footprints.
In addition, where no building footprints or LiDAR existed,
DRCOG utilized its regional parcel inventory of over 1.2
million parcels to fill in the gaps and calculate a single and
more generalized solar estimation so that all facilities in the
region would be included.
Finally, DRCOG partnered with the Colorado Solar
Energy Industries Association (COSEIA, Boulder, Colo.) and
worked even more closely with one of the COSEIA members
who is a local solar installer to develop region-specific solar
power generation estimates, electric bill savings and an estimate of solar PV system sizing for each building in the database. This was an important partnership that provides Solar
Map users with the most accurate solar estimation specific to
Colorado’s environmental factors.
The App Framework
DRCOG also partnered with a Woolpert software developer to build a customized front end. It was important for
DRCOG to utilize a mix of open source and commercial technologies that fit the existing DRCOG architecture with which
the in-house GIS programmers were already familiar, and
would be able to further extend in the future, as needed.
DRCOG staff used the Google Maps API (Google, Inc.,
Mountain View, Calif.) to allow the app user to geocode their
business or residential address, or zoom around manually to
find a building that they might be interested in (see Figure
18
2).
The Google Maps API was chosen because it is already
familiar to most Internet users and no training would be
required to learn to geocode an address or use the map to
locate a building. After a building is chosen by the user, a
wizard is utilized to show the benefits of solar PV installation (see Figures 3 and 4). DRCOG’s open source enterprise
spatial database environment is PostGIS (OSGeo Project of
the OSGeo Foundation, Vancouver, BC, Canada) and this
is where all the building locations (800,000+ records) and
The Benefits and the Future
The Denver Regional Solar Map has leveraged existing
data and resources in the Denver region from local, regional,
state, federal and private partnerships. Acquisition of high
resolution digital orthophotography and LiDAR in conjunction with the availability of building footprint data has
greatly benefitted the potential for solar PV installations on
buildings throughout the Denver metropolitan region.
The application has created a foundational mapping
WW F ig u r e 2 . This is the initial screen that is displayed when a user loads http://
5
solarmap.drcog.org.
WW F ig u r e 3 . Once a user searches for an address or clicks on a building, the wizard
appears. This is the first screen of the wizard, which shows approximate monthly
power generation that the building could potentially produce if a solar system is
installed.
WW F ig u r e 4 . The second screen of the wizard displays potential savings based on an
estimated solar system size for the building.
WW F ig u r e 5 . Graphic shows rooftop obstructions that are automatically mapped
through the feature extraction process.
TT F ig u r e 6 . Graphic shows rooftop obstructions that solar installers can see for each
building in the back end of the application when they login.
rooftop obstruction polygons (2.5+
million) are stored for use in the
application. Woolpert’s software
developer used the Ruby on Rails
framework to make the connection
between the Google Maps API click
events and the PostGIS database.
The partnership with COSEIA
provided the solar estimation to
populate the buildings database,
and provided DRCOG members
with a login to the application that
would allow the solar installers to
see and explore the obstructions that were mapped from
Woolpert’s feature extraction process (see Figures 5 and 6).
COSEIA members can create a login to the site and explore
the mapping details of the application that might be too
complex for the users.
DRCOG performed detailed interviews with several
COSEIA members in gathering requirements for their interface and mapping needs. DRCOG GIS programmers then
performed usability testing with additional COSEIA members
to get their final feedback before deploying the application to
the public. Once a member of the public chooses through the
application to be “contacted by a local installer,” the record
goes into a queue where up to five installers can contact and
provide a more detailed building assessment and solar PV
estimate for prospective customers.
framework that is complex on the
backend for local solar installers to
research buildings with obstructions, and simple yet powerful
on the front end for the public to
learn more about solar and for the
local installers to connect directly
to customers.
After the first year of use of
the application by the public and
COSEIA members, DRCOG will be
6
analyzing and sharing the successes
and challenges encountered and
thoughts on how the application might be improved for future use.
In addition, the application data, database and process that were
developed for identifying rooftop obstructions could easily be
reprocessed in the future when new DRAPP imagery and LiDAR
are acquired. This allows the team to leverage the existing methodology and make improvements to the data behind the application without a significant additional investment of resources.
Additional DRCOG Imagery, Data and Mapping Links
>> Denver Regional Solar Map: http://solarmap.drcog.org
>> Denver Regional Aerial Photography Project: www.drcog.org/
drapp
>> Denver Regional Data Consortium: www.drcog.org/drdc
19
Dynamic GIS = GIS + Remote
20
Sensing + Photogrammetry
Translate change, on the fly, into actionable
information.
Combining the strengths of Intergraph and ERDAS (along
with Leica Geosystems), we now offer the industry’s most
comprehensive set of geospatial solutions, aligning all the
vehicles necessary to make the Dynamic GIS a reality.
Completely connecting sensors to software and software to
solutions catapults our entire industry into a new era, where
integrated geospatial systems replace the traditional domains
of GIS, remote sensing, photogrammetry, surveying, and mapping.
The Dynamic GIS aligns the most innovative offerings in the
geospatial industry. We have the market ingredients, coupled
with a revolutionary strategy to fulfill the increasing demands
for information portraying our changing earth.
Learn more at www.erdas.com/DynamicGIS. Please visit
www.erdas.com or contact us at info@erdas.com or
+1 877 GO ERDAS.
21
1
Leonard David
By
Research Associate
Secure World Foundation
Superior, Colo.
www.secureworldfoundation.org
Note: The author would like to
Author’s
thank Bevan French of the Smithsonian
Institution and David Kring of the Lunar
and Planetary Institute for their guidance in
writing this article.
C a ll t h e m t r o u b le - m a k e r s o f t h e h e av e n s . As t e r o i d s a n d
periodic comets can wander into the Earth’s neighborhood, and on occasion, crash into our planet. Earth has the scars to prove it.
Over geologic time, these malicious cosmic interlopers have left their mark on
our world. But obtaining a true inventory of Earth’s impact craters is made difficult
by erosional processes over eons of time, as well as vegetation overgrowth – along
with politics and even a touch of secrecy.
Impact-minded Searchers
In the past, most images of craters were aerial or from the Space Shuttle. See
Figures 1-2 . Today, in the 21st century, thanks to an armada of Earth-orbiting satel-
lites that provide worldwide coverage, including use of high-resolution imaging
technology, the prospect for eyeing new sites has been boosted. Moreover, special
processing can reveal insights about a crater imaged by a digital system.
“Impact-minded searchers have discovered at least ten new impact structures
through satellite remote sensing. Before Landsat, and to some extent since 1973,
observations from airplanes, and in particular aerial photos, were a source of
information about possible craters,” notes Nicholas Short, formerly with NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He explains in a web-based
22
2
Satellites Help Unearth a Missing Record
remote sensing tutorial that in large parts of the world
the more obvious craters have been found by conventional techniques.
“But in parts that were poorly mapped or explored,
evidence from satellite imagery may be the first overviewtype looking that discloses heretofore unnoticed impact
shapes or scars,” Short reports. “Previously known impact
craters are being re-examined in the context of their
surroundings. But, the scientific ‘fun’ has been to search for
new ones, especially in isolated regions not easily accessed
or populated. The basic strategy in the hunt is to look for
distinct circular structures or features, the hallmark of
craters, and then to find confirmatory evidence that impact
was involved.”
WW F ig u r e 1. Meteor Crater in Arizona — The origin of this classic, simple
meteorite impact crater was long the subject of controversy. The discovery
of fragments of the Canyon Diablo meteorite, including fragments within the
breccia deposits that partially fill the structure, and the presence of a range
of shock-metamorphic features in the target sandstone, confirmed its impact
origin. Target rocks include Paleozoic carbonates and sandstones; these rocks
have been overturned just outside the rim during ejection. The hummocky
deposits just beyond the rim are remnants of the ejecta blanket. This aerial
view shows the dramatic expression of the crater in the arid landscape. The
rim diameter is 1.2 kilometers, age is 49,000 ± 3000 years. Location is 35°02’N,
111°01’W. Aerial image courtesy of D. Roddy, residing at www.lpi.usra.edu.
SS F ig u r e 2 . Manicouagan, Canada — The moderately eroded, central part of the
structure (the plateau surrounded by the lake) is partly covered by impact melts
and contains shattered rocks and several uplifted peaks about 5 kilometers
north of the center. The quantity of data obtained on the melt sheet and the
underlying target rocks make Manicouagan one of the most intensely studied
large complex impact structures in the world, and it is an important source of
Data Sources
Crater-spotting is exemplified by the work of researchers
at Boston University’s Center for Remote Sensing. There,
Farouk El-Baz and his colleague Eman Ghoneim discov-
ground-truth data for understanding the cratering process. The radiometrically
determined age of the structure is close to (but not quite identical with) the
biostratigraphically derived age of the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. The original
rim diameter was ~100 kilometers; age is 214 ± 1 million years. Locatio is 51°23’N,
68°42’W. Courtesy of Space Shuttle, image STS42-207-14.
23
ered the remnants of the largest crater in
the Sahara. El-Baz, the Center’s director,
named the find “Kebira,” meaning “large”
in Arabic and also relating to the crater’s
physical location on the northern tip of the
Gilf Kebir region in southwestern Egypt.
See Figure 3.
One of the data sources that assisted
in mapping of the feature is the Shuttle
Radar Topography Mission, which allows
measurement of elevations in three dimen-
3
SS F ig u r e 3 . Kebira Crater in Egypt’s Western Desert’s
outer rim is 31 km in diameter, as indicated by the
dashed circular curve superimposed on the image.
Landsat color composite image is courtesy of Boston
University Center for Remote Sensing.
sions. Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper
Plus (ETM+) images and RadarSat-1 data
were also tasked.
But why hadn’t this large feature been
seen before?
“Kebira may have escaped recognition because it is so large – equivalent
to the total expanse of the Cairo urban
region from its airport in the northeast to
the Pyramids of Giza in the southwest,”
said El-Baz in a 2006 university press
statement. “Also, the search for craters
typically concentrates on small features,
especially those that can be identified on
the ground. The advantage of a view from
space is that it allows us to see regional
patterns and the big picture.”
In another case, the so-named
“Kamil Crater” was located a few years
ago during a Google Earth “low flight
charting mission”– some 1,000 meters
above ground level. Scientists think the
impact crater was created within the
past couple thousand years.
Located at Djebel Kamil, south of Gilf
Kebir near the Sudanese border in Egypt,
the crater is 45 meters in diameter and
is considered one of the best-preserved
craters found on Earth to date. Subsequent ground truth visits by teams found
thousands of meteorite fragments scattered within the crater and surrounding
area. See Figure 4.
Science Conference in March of this
year, study leader Ludovic Ferrière,
curator of the rock collection at the
Natural History Museum of Vienna in
Austria, reported that the feature was
definitely an impact crater.
A detailed analysis of the Luizi structure combined a remote sensing study
with geological field observations and
examination of rock samples during a
2010 field campaign. The researchers
confirmed Luizi to be a complex and
huge impact crater in the remote Congo
– the first known impact crater in central
Africa, bringing the number of known
meteor craters on Earth to 182.
Ground Truth
Manual Finds
The need for satellite remote sensing to
hand off to in-the-field confirmation of a
crater was recently illustrated. A circular
depression, called the Luizi structure,
deep in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, was pinpointed a few years ago
as a possible crater by Philippe Claeys
of the Department of Geology and head
of Research Unit Earth System Sciences
at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels,
Belgium.
Looking at the world distribution
map of impact structures, it was clear
to Claeys and his colleagues that many
craters remain to be discovered on
the old shield of Central Africa. See
Figure 5 for a World Map of Craters from
the year 2000. In 1990, based on the
circular morphology, an impact origin
was proposed for a structure. Unfortunately, the feature was located in a
rather remote region, difficult to visit in
a country in tumult and strife for more
than 25 years.
In the Claeys-headed research, a
digital elevation model of the promising
crater was generated from the Advanced
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and
Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) imaging
instrument flying on NASA’s Terra satellite. That remote sensing study of the
Luizi structure supported a possible
impact crater origin.
At the 42nd Lunar and Planetary
Creating algorithms for automatic
identification of craters on Earth is a nonstarter, said Tom Stepinski, the Thomas
Jefferson Chair Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of
Cincinnati. Stepinski has been a leader in
this arena – but for use on beyond-Earth
targets.
Craters on planets that either lack
atmosphere or have very tenuous
atmosphere are well preserved. Not
so for Earth, he continued. For one,
craters erode very fast (on geological
time scales) due to fast scale of erosion
on Earth, so terrestrial topography
preserves only a very fresh crater (like
the one in Arizona). Older impact sites
on Earth are heavily degraded and
cannot be detected remotely.
Additionally, even for fresh craters,
images cannot be used because vegetation masks the sites of impacts to the
degree that makes automatic detection
of them from satellite images impossible. “Thus, on Earth we need to rely
on manual finds. Yes, we can use satellite data Digital Elevation Models and
images to help us in this process, but
the process cannot be automatic…algorithmic,” Stepinski explained.
Use of radar imagery taken from
space has been a huge help in interpreting
prospective impact craters, said Richard
Grieve at the Earth Sciences Sector,
24
Natural Resources Canada in Ottawa.
“One of the problems with optical imagery
is that what you’re getting back is basically a reflection of vegetation. And that
vegetation doesn’t necessarily follow the
structure of the crater,” he told Imaging
Notes, “so I think radar is one of the ways
to go.” See Figure 6 of the Zhamanshin
crater in Kazakhstan.
Grieve said that the cratering rate on
Earth is considered to be twice as high as
on the Moon. “So there are still craters
on our planet to be found, particularly in
places like Africa, which has not been well
explored.” Also, with the Earth covered
mostly with water, Grieve suggested
that the U.S. Navy is holding tight what
undersea crater sites they have charted,
“but they are not telling everybody.”
Evolution of Our Planet and Its Life
While being on the lookout for
impact sites on Earth may be a daunting
challenge, there are several rationales
for identifying new craters, explained
David Kring at the Center for Lunar
Science & Exploration at the Lunar and
Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas.
“My team’s discovery of the Chicxulub impact crater and its link to the
K-T boundary mass extinction event
illustrate how impact cratering can
affect both the geologic and biologic
evolution of Earth,” Kring told Imaging
Notes. Discovery of new craters, he
added, will help researchers explore
how other events may have punctuated
the evolution of our planet and its life.
Kring also flagged the fact that
discovering new craters can help
measure better the environmental
effects of impact events in the geologic
history, and thus provide the foundation
needed to better assess future impact
hazards. “Sometimes saving the planet
means looking at its past,” he said.
There’s another plus, Kring suggested,
in identifying new impact craters on
Earth. “They are true natural wonders
and provide any host country with an
economic attraction and an opportunity to
enhance science education of the public.”
Discerning Circles, the Eye-brain
Connection
“Satellite images from orbit are useful
for recognizing candidate impact craters.
Of course, natural geological processes
besides impact cratering can create
circular features on the Earth’s surface.
And the human eye-brain connection
loves to discern simple shapes like circles,
whether they are really there or not,”
said Clark Chapman, a leading asteroid
expert at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Certainly the earth must have
been as heavily cratered as the moon,
Chapman said. “But most of the moon’s
craters formed billions of years ago and
remain today because of the moon’s
minimal geological activity. The earth
is a geologically active planet, with
continents forming and eroding away
and seafloors in constant motion.”
That being the case, Chapman
added, virtually all of the ancient
craters on Earth were rendered invisible
long ago. Those remaining that geologists can decipher from on-the-ground
studies are often not recognizable from
space. Most known terrestrial craters
are of rather recent origin and haven’t
been around long enough to have been
eroded away, he told Imaging Notes.
“Understanding the earth’s impact
history can help us understand the
histories of other planets, since comets
and asteroids like those that have
struck the earth strike other planets,
as well,” Chapman said. “And craters
have a practical importance. They can
focus geological processes that collect
valuable resources, like oil and nickel,
for extraction.”
Indeed, the current record of ‘proven’
impact sites is measured in the range of
150-200, rather than in the thousands,
as one might presume,” Garvin said.
Part of the issue with discovering the
largely missing terrestrial cratering record,
Garvin said, is a combination of preservation (how well an impact landform or
signature can be preserved over time in a
given geologic setting) and detection.
“We have about 150 million square
kilometers of land area today to search,
with much of it vegetated, overprinted
by very recent geological events, such as
shifting sands, and some of it covered
with ice,” Garvin advised. “Methods
of detecting impact features – craters,
signatures in rocks, geophysical expressions – while improving, remain somewhat limited,” he told Imaging Notes.
For Garvin, the bottom line: “This
is a geological forensics problem!”
4
SS F ig u r e 4 . Kamil Crater is located at Djebel Kamil, south
of Gilf Kebir near the Sudanese border in Egypt. This crater
is 45 meters in diameter and is considered one of the
best-preserved craters found on Earth to date. Photograph
courtesy Museo Nazionale dell’Antartide Università di Siena.
Looking Ahead
Geological Forensics
The impact cratering record on
Earth is extremely “under-served,” said
James Garvin, Chief Scientist at NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center.
“The ability to preserve the scars
of major collisional events is extremely
challenged by the incredible dynamism of Earth’s geological processes.
Bolstering the topographic reconnaissance of Earth as a whole is possible over
the next decade via planned or recommended missions that NASA’s Earth
Science Program may implement.
Given increased thinking of how best
to thwart an incoming object from stirring up a bad day in our world, plus given
new awareness of the impact flux at the
25
Moon and Mars, “we need a ‘mission
to planet Earth’ approach to finding our
own planet’s impact record.”
Looking ahead, Garvin spotlights
the emerging global satellite remote
sensing datasets, including those from
NASA’s Earth Observing System
(EOS) spacecraft, the Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission (SRTM), Canada’s RadarSat missions, and commercial remote sensing satellites, such as
GeoEye. “These datasets could revolutionize preliminary detection of candidate impact features – or signatures –
over the next decade.”
Garvin pointed out that the key to
realistic detection will be establishment
of a set of definitive criteria for recognition tied to an existing benchmark set of
signatures calibrated in the new remote
sensing datasets. New orbital assets such
as Canada’s RadarSat-2 and Astrium and
DLR’s TerraSAR-X could contribute to
this criteria-shaping, as would NASA’s
fine enough to investigate kilometer-scale
features, are particularly interesting.
Garvin also senses that declassification of certain datasets would augment
stand better their signatures.
“The impact record of Earth is a key to
understanding the history of life,” Garvin
observed. That objects impact Earth and
5
SS F ig u r e 5 . Known Impact Structures (Craters Map). This image shows the geographic
distribution of about 160 structures that have been positively identified as impact structures
6
based on the presence of shock-metamorphic effects and/or the presence of a meteoritic
component or fragments at the structure, as of 2000.
WW F ig u r e 6 . Zhamanshin crater in Kazakhstan. This image combines 90-meter resolution
Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) topography with Spaceborne Imaging Radar (SIR-C)
polarimetric synthetic aperture radar to show the subtle crater that formed only 870,000 years
ago. Courtesy: James Garvin/NASA.
upcoming ICE-Sat-2 and missions of
the Deformation, Ecosystem Structure
and Dynamics of Ice (DESDynI) that
involve Earth-imaging radar and Lidar
technologies.
Ultimately, however, field expeditions
involving geophysics (gravity, seismic
surveys) and sample analysis will be essential, Garvin said. New airborne geophysical methods, in which topography and
micro-gravity can be measured at scales
the search for candidate craters. For
example, a bonus would be making
available full resolution Shuttle Radar
Topography Mission digital elevation
models at 30-meter horizontal scales for
Africa, South America and Asia. Furthermore, and another plus, would be release
of U.S. Department of Defense imaging
of regions of Africa, Asia, and South
America, including their specialized
radar images of known craters, to under-
affect climate is not in question, he said;
rather, what is in question “is a more
complete history of how impact events
have shaped the details of the environmental-biological-geological history of
our planet for the past 4.6 billion years.”
Garvin concluded that the next
decade or two “could see an explosion in the recognition of as-yet undiscovered aspects of the Earth’s impact
record.”
Resources
Lunar and Planetary Institute: www.lpi.usra.edu
The Earth Impact Database at the Planetary and Space Science Centre:
www.passc.net/EarthImpactDatabase/index.html
Geology.com - Meteor Craters: http://geology.com/meteor-impact-craters.shtml
26
CALL FOR PAPERS
ISDE7
Incorporating WALIS FORUM 2011
and the STATE NRM CONFERENCE
23 – 25 AUGUST 2011 Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre
This invitation is your opportunity to contribute to ISDE7,
WALIS Forum 2011 and the State NRM Conference by
sharing your knowledge, experience and insight with
over 1000 conference delegates from the areas of digital
earth modelling, spatial sciences and natural resources
management.
Additional Information
Submissions
http://www.facebook.com/WALISForum
http://au.linkedin.com/in/walis
http://twitter.com/WALISForum
If you are interested in presenting at the Conference, please
refer to the website (http://www.isde7.net/call-for-papers)
for suggested themes and topics.
If you have any queries about the Call for Papers, please
contact the WALIS Office on +61 8 9273 7046 or email
walis@walis.wa.gov.au.
Follow us!
Abstracts are to be no more than 250 words and must be
submitted by 28 February 2011 according to the details and
guidelines outlined.
27
1
Image Analysis Provides the Intelligence
Necessary to Prepare, Respond and
Heal After Natural Disasters
E x t r e m e w e at h e r i s w r e a k i n g h avo c i n N o r t h
America this year. The 2011 tornado season was recordsetting, beginning in April with 438 confirmed twisters.
The same extreme weather patterns causing tornadoes are also
leading to heavy rainfall in the midwestern region of the continent.
Runoff led to serious flood conditions, blocking roads and highways, inundating thousands of acres of agricultural land and leaving buildings saturated with water. While the North flooded,
winds and drought struck the South. West Texas experienced multiple fires that burned more than 1.6 million acres of brush and
forest land.
WW F ig u r e 1. Change detection is an exact science when using
properly registered imagery. Here before and after images of
the Red River flooding show areas that have been impacted.
Karen Richardson
By
Esri Writer
Redlands, Calif.
www.esri.com
28
Complex disasters like these require quick response. Earth observation through
remote sensors can play a key role in managing information. Data can be collected in
near real-time and analyzed for all aspects of disaster management, from preparation
to response and remediation. In dire situations, imagery can become more than just
a basemap or backdrop. When integrated with GIS, imagery’s key benefit becomes
providing a rich set of derived information for advanced analysis.
Knowledge from Accurate Image Registration
2
Esri (Redlands, Calif.) is working with its partners to bring remotely sensed data
and image processing into the GIS environment. This integration is making Earth
observation imagery more easily accessible to a wider user community, which stands
to benefit greatly from improved understanding of the dynamic conditions of the
earth through repeat data collection and monitoring.
Esri partner PCI Geomatics (Ontario, Quebec, Canada) provides automated satellite sensor data integration into Esri’s ArcGIS environment. PCI’s GeoImaging Tools
for ArcGIS automate the methods for correcting imagery, ensuring seamless integration within the GIS platform. Traditionally, these tasks were performed by scientists
and others with specific expertise in remote sensing. A lack of tools and knowledge of
how to integrate imagery into GIS has long been a barrier to accessing imagery.
“Even with the increased availability of remotely sensed imagery, downloading and
making use of the imagery remains a daunting task for the nonexpert,” says Kevin Jones,
director of marketing and product management at PCI Geomatics. “What should I do
with it now? Where do I bring it in? What format is it in? How do I access the different
bands? These are some of the common questions and reasons why non-remote sensing
experts hesitate in downloading and making more use of satellite imagery.”
Historically, GIS users seeking to overlay imagery for their analysis needed to
pre-process the imagery to ensure it would line up with existing features for a given
study area. Collecting ground control points (GCPs) manually was the order of the
day. Correcting imagery to remove distortions and ensure proper alignment meant
manual collection of common features on referenced and non-referenced datasets.
“Poor imagery registration limits a GIS user’s ability to efficiently perform simple
change detection and feature extraction tasks,” says Lawrie Jordan, Esri director
of imagery. “By achieving high levels of image registration accuracy, GIS users can
extract features and focus on more detailed analysis.”
Image registration is the first step to seamlessly integrating data into any organization’s GIS workflow. Having the right tools to perform rigorous corrections and to
ensure that multiple types of data are properly aligned for further analysis allows users
to tap the knowledge they need from their imagery. Now, decision makers can use multitemporal, multi-spectral and multi-sensoral imagery to derive information through
advanced analysis of Earth observation in support of better business decisions.
How the Red River Flows
SS F ig u r e 2 . This image shows a 3D
overlay of burn severity. A DNBR slice
image is draped over a DEM in Esri’s
ArcScene to begin visually exploring
the different regions that have been
impacted by fire. Red areas have
steep slopes and severe burning and
are at risk for soil loss.
Up-to-date derived information from imagery can help disaster management authorities perform rapid response activities. Authorities not only are able to use massive amounts
of remotely sensed imagery efficiently, but also have the ability to use the data for change
detection, providing scientific, or evidence-based, decision making.
Two years ago, during the flood season of 2009, RADARSAT- 2, with synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) imagery, was used by authorities in Manitoba, Canada, to map
the extent of the Red River flood and its progression on a daily basis. SAR imagery is
extremely valuable, since it can detect the presence of overland flooding even through
adverse weather conditions such as cloud cover and darkness.
“Multiple satellite sensors collect imagery on a daily basis,” explains Jones. “These
29
satellites can collect vast amounts of
imagery that are transmitted to the
ground and disseminated for analysis
within minutes of acquisition. Integrated analysis and decision making
in an integrated GIS platform like
ArcGIS provide the ideal environment
for making informed decisions that
can help save lives and limit damage to
infrastructure and property.”
An international watershed, the Red
River flows north toward Manitoba
along the Minnesota-North Dakota
border into Lake Winnipeg. The Red
River basin is a flat and highly productive agricultural area spreading across
116,500 square kilometers. Rapid
changes from cool winters to warm
summers, coupled with the terrain and
climatic conditions, contribute to an
area that is highly sensitive to spring
flooding.
and transmitted to the Water Stewardship group. See Figure 1 .
“Critical decisions that affect our
citizens are carefully considered by
examining the information derived
from the imagery,” says Michelle
Methot, who is a water stewardship
specialist in the Water Stewardship
group. “Imagery played a critical role
to help the Manitoba government make
the difficult but responsible decision to
make a controlled opening in a dike
along the Assiniboine River. Geospatial analysis allowed us to take many
factors into consideration related to the
affected areas, the local population and
potential for greater damage. This analysis led to informed decision making
and, ultimately, to the breaching of a
main dike at the Hoop and Holler bend
of the Assiniboine River.”
Geospatial Analysis Provides a
Complete Picture
Many organizations were involved in
monitoring and responding to the 2009
flooding. Response efforts included the
use of an ArcGIS software-based decision support system that proved to be a
very useful tool for collecting, storing,
accessing and distributing the information pertaining to the floods. At the
provincial level, the Manitoba Water
Stewardship group embraced the use of
Earth observations and in particular,
RADARSAT to detect and monitor
flood conditions on a routine basis due
to the reliability of the information and
timeliness of its collection and delivery.
The provincial authorities established links with the Emergency
Response team at the Canada Centre
for Remote Sensing (CCRS). Satellite images were collected in real time
at a ground receiving station that
produced an initial imagery product
within minutes of acquisition. At
CCRS, experts carefully analyzed the
imagery to delineate flooded areas in
the updated imagery. The information
was then converted to a vector format
XX F ig u r e 4 . Above
average fire activity
has plagued the
southern United
States since February
of this year due
to above normal
temperatures
and below normal
precipitation, drying
out vegetation and
creating fuel for
fires. Photo credit:
Joe Zamudio, ITT VIS.
4
WW F ig u r e 3 . Users
can interactively
select an area
and run a
custom image
processing tool
that detects a burn
zone inside the GIS
environment. In this
case, an ENVI tool
is used within the
ArcGIS environment.
3
In the case of this year’s Red River
floods in Manitoba and North Dakota,
Earth observation coupled with GIS is
again playing a critical role in providing
near real-time information for disaster
response. Using repeat pass collection and all-weather, day/night SAR
satellites, near real-time monitoring is
possible in the flood-affected regions
of Manitoba. The imagery is used to
support daily analysis and to enhance
situational awareness by identifying
the rapid changes in the landscape as a
result of flooding. Derived information
is used to support decision making on
assessing potential damages to communities and infrastructure. Determination of the risk for failures of dikes,
and help in determining where existing
flood diversion and protection infrastructure needs reinforcing, are again
being provided.
Derived Information Helps
Mitigation Efforts
The use of Earth observation extends
past the disaster response stage. Imagery
provides a record of conditions on the
30
ground that can be used after the fact to
confirm the location of flood-affected
homes and businesses. This information
is useful for individuals, businesses and
insurance companies that process claims.
“The usefulness of imagery extends
beyond providing a backdrop. Users
increasingly appreciate the rich set of
information that can be derived from
mutli-temporal, multi-spectral, multisensor and multi-resolution imagery,”
says Esri’s Jordan.
Education and outreach are critical
for truly discovering the potential for the
operational use of imagery. Through a
joint partnership, McDonald, Detwiller
and Associates (MDA), based in British
Columbia, Canada, and the owner/
operator of RADARSAT-2 and PCI
Geomatics, has been developing a series
of instructional webinars that focus on
the utility of SAR imagery. The webinars are based on operational uses such
as the Manitoba case. In addition, a
dedicated website was created by PCI
Geomatics to provide basic information
on SAR imagery, its characteristics and
utility; the site can be accessed at www.
pcigeomatics.com/sar.
From Floods to Fires
While locals in Canada and the
Northern United States have been
battling flooding, those living in the
Southwest have been putting out fires.
This year, a drought in West Texas has
led to large areas with extremely dry
underbrush and ground cover. Current
weather conditions have included persistent winds of 20 miles per hour or
faster that have contributed to severe
fire conditions in the area. Total burn
area in the beginning of May was more
than 256,000 acres from 511 wildfires,
according to the United States Department of Agriculture. While the areas
of the fires are sparsely populated, the
disruption to local farming and livestock
production is expected to be significant.
Esri partner ITT VIS (Boulder, Colo.)
provides GIS analysts with the ability to
visualize imagery and exploit information
to face challenges like wildfires, which
burn millions of acres of land each year.
Working over time, ITT VIS has brought
its advanced image processing software,
ENVI, into the ArcGIS environment
via the ENVI Tools for ArcGIS, a fully
integrated ArcGIS Toolbox. Today, the
two products work seamlessly together
to share data and the ENVI image
processing and analysis tools can be used
within the ArcGIS environment. Using
the toolbox, GIS users can build models
that can be applied to any application on a
server, and then published throughout an
enterprise with Web applications anyone
can use. “This capability gives GIS users
access to the more real-time information from geospatial imagery for use in
GIS workflows,” says Lori Thompson,
vice president of marketing and support
services, ITT VIS.
Staff at ITT VIS created a fire fuel
tool model built for ArcGIS using ENVI
image processing algorithms. The model
maps the distribution of fire fuels and
burn hazards using spectral imagery.
Fire managers need to provide effective
methods for mapping fire fuels accurately,
since fuel distribution is very important
for predicting fire behavior. Looking at
elevation of the land, slope, aspect, and
canopy cover, and developing a surface
fuel model coupled with weather and
wind data can provide those fighting the
fires with the most accurate information
in order to plan their response.
Surface fuels are the greatest concern,
since they are major contributors to the
intensity and spread of fires. The fire
fuel tool developed highlights areas
with high fire fuel by identifying areas
with dry or drying plant material, a
high risk factor for wildfire, as opposed
to low fire fuel areas containing mainly
lush, green plants.
In addition to this model, multiple
ENVI tools exist to help assess vegetation damage caused by fires and extreme
weather events. Standard classification
and feature extraction tools help analysts
to map areas of damage. Change detection tools can also automatically locate
31
and measure damage. When damaged
areas are small relative to the size of the
scene, an anomaly detection tool can help
quickly identify damaged areas that are
different from those in the background.
Taking Back the Land
While burning fires need to be dealt
with quickly and efficiently, the effects
of the fire after the burn also cause
significant issues. Covering hundreds of
acres of land stripped of natural protection and reestablishing conservation
measures, especially on rangeland such
as in Texas, can be an expensive task.
The importance of installing measures
that reduce post-fire damage and aid
in rehabilitating the area is high, as the
USDA recognizes. This federal agency
has made $400,000 available through
its Environmental Quality Incentives
Program to help Texans reestablish
the land. This funding can be used to
rebuild fences, defer livestock grazing
and bring stability to farmers’ sometimes precarious operations, allowing
the land to heal.
Imagery can again assist in allocating resources when erosion remediation is necessary after a severe burn
such as that in Texas. Since all agencies
operate under cost controls, derived
information from remotely sensed data
can be used to prioritize which regions
receive post-fire mitigation first.
Using the ENVI image processing
tools available for ArcGIS Server, ITT
VIS also created another model, the Burn
Severity Toolkit. Taking images before
and after fires that consumed the area
around Boulder, Colorado, earlier this
year, staff calculated a normalized burn
ratio of the damage. This was accomplished by comparing the two images to
see how severely burned the area was.
The U. S. Geological Survey and
the National Park Service developed a
burn severity index based on Landsat
Thematic Mapper and Enhanced
Thematic Mapper (TM/ETM) bands
4 (near-infrared) and 7 (mid-infrared)
that is called the Normalized Burn
Ratio (NBR). NBR imagery allows
federal land managers and fire ecologists to evaluate and compare burn
severity within individual fires and
between fires across various ecosystems. The formula for the NBR is
very similar to that of the Normalized
Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI),
a simple numerical indicator that can
be used to analyze remotely sensed
measurements. In this case, the formula
uses band 4 and band 7. The Differenced Natural Background Radiation
(DNBR) is computed by subtracting the
post-fire NBR from the pre-fire NBR.
The higher DNBR values are correlated
with more severe burns.
The next step is to integrate the
DNBR information with slope information calculated from existing digital
elevation models. Areas of high DNBR
and high slope are merged into a single
result and flagged as having a high
erosion potential. All of these processing
steps are combined using Esri’s ModelBuilder technology, along with surface
information such as soil type, surface
cover, impermeability, and many other
properties, to derive a full erosion probability model that can be used to help
prioritize remediation efforts. ENVI
image analysis tools such as the fire fuel
load tool and the burn severity toolkit
being integrated with ArcGIS are two
examples of how imagery brings a layer
of information to GIS workflows that
helps in better critical decision making.
See Figures 2-4.
Importance of Imagery in the
International Community
Impacts from disasters in North
America such as the Red River flooding
and Texas wildfires, as well as others
throughout the world, are considerable.
Geospatial information can improve
our understanding of impacts and risks,
leading to improved preparedness, prevention and mitigation of impacts. The operational use of satellite Earth observation
and the increase in the sources available
have made a crucial difference to how
the earth’s resources are managed, where
people choose to live, and what steps are
taken to protect against the impacts of
future disasters. Detailed analysis in GIS
systems has made this possible – integrating the dynamic information derived
from Earth observation adds the crucial
time element.
The international community has
recognized the valuable information that can be extracted from Earth
observation imagery and places a high
degree of importance on the creation of
political mechanisms and agreements
to facilitate the acquisition, processing
and dissemination of imagery. In July
1999, the European and French space
agencies (ESA and CNES) initiated
the International Charter “Space and
Major Disasters” with the Canadian
Space Agency (CSA) signing the charter
on October 20, 2000.
The goal of the “Disaster Charter”
is to provide access to satellite imagery
when disasters strike to help with
assessment and relief efforts – imagery
from optical and SAR satellites can be
requested in a rapid manner. Satellite
resources are made available through
data sharing agreements set up with
the space agencies of the respective
governments. According to the latest
annual report, the charter was activated 39 times during 2011, an average
of three times per month, up sharply
from previous years. The information
derived from Earth observation through
the charter activations has redefined
people’s understanding of disasters,
how to respond and what preventive
actions to take in the future.
Integrated use of imagery in geospatial analysis has made a tremendous
difference – further integration and
streamlining of workflows will lead to
even better results. The information
imagery brings and the information that
can be derived give an added advantage
by opening up another dimension to
really understand what is going on in
a geographic area of interest. To learn
more visit www.esri.com/imagery.
32
SS Joplin,
Missouri is hit by a mile-wide,
six-mile long tornado clearing this path
through town. MJ Harden aerial image
was taken May 24, 2011, and is courtesy
of GeoEye.
Solutions for a Challenging World
Esri’s partners help provide total
solutions for GIS users who need in-depth
intelligence on Earth information
Esri’s partners provide software, services and data that
create total solutions for ArcGIS users. More than 2,000 companies in
46 countries belong to the ESRI Partner Network ranging from large
multinational corporations to regional specialty companies. While their
products and services vary, they all hold a common vision – to bring GIS
users the tools they need to perform sophisticated analysis necessary to face the
challenges of our complex world.
GeoEye, with their high-resolution imagery such as this one of the tornado in
Joplin, Missouri, is an example of one organization bringing specialized tools into the
ArcGIS environment. The satellite and aerial imagery that GeoEye collects around the
globe each day is processed and can be used in a multitude of applications ranging
from mapping, disaster response, infrastructure management and environmental
monitoring. Other examples of how imagery and advanced image processing help GIS
users become part of the recovery from catastrophes like this is detailed in this issue’s
feature article on page 28.
Information on Esri partners can be found at www.esri.com/partners. Find
organizations that span the spectrum of solutions from getting data into your GIS
system to creating professional quality output, such as those showcased in this
special section.
ESRI
B u si n ess
Pa r t n ers
Fo r
I m a gery
[special sponsored section]
33
The Cloud is rolling into San Diego
Esri international User Conference - Imagery Island Booth 1406
What will the cloud bring to you? Is cloud computing an opportunity or
a threat? Why is improving access to volumes of multi resolution, multi
spectral, multi sensor, and multi temporal information important, and how
will it move the geospatial industry forward? PCI Geomatics experts will be
on hand in booth 1406 at the Esri International User Conference to discuss
all this and more. Stop by the booth and discover your cloud strategy.
The Cloud is Here. Be ready
34
GeoImaging
Accelerator
www.pcigeomatics.com/cloud
PCI Geomatics Improves Access
to Historical and New Imagery
ESRI
The use of geospatial information has exploded in the
recent years, and the vision expressed by Jack Dangermond several
years back “GIS is for Everyone” has come true. Consumer mapping
is the new reality, and imagery is a key reason for this.
As a developer of software tools and solutions that enhance the ArcGIS
platform, PCI Geomatics is working closely with Esri to make imagery
more accessible to non-remote sensing experts. Imagery, as the new
basemap, provides that instant connection to geography. Anyone looking
at imagery, especially high resolution, can make an immediate connection
to the features they can see – their houses, cars, schools, neighbourhoods,
community centres, etc.
Current operational satellite missions are many, and vary from coarse
resolution (with large spatial coverage) to medium and high resolution
(with decreasing spatial coverage). Spectral bands and sensor types are also
many, ranging from multi-spectral sensors, hyperspectral sensors, and also
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors. The latest trends are to operate
satellite missions as constellations, as has been seen with RapidEye, and
TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X, for example.
Consumer mapping applications have grown exponentially, but PCI
Geomatics believes we have only begun to scratch the surface. Stored away
in the archives are incredible volumes of multi-resolution, multi-spectral,
multi-sensor, and multi-temporal information from these Earth observation
sensors. What applications can be developed using this rich source of information? Finding out requires that imagery be accessible, and tools make
discovering, accessing, analyzing, and disseminating/sharing information
derived from imagery as easy as it is for hundreds of millions of people to
download a geospatial application like Google Earth, or adopt the use of
map-based local search sites such as Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Maps, or
MapQuest.
Esri has made incredible advances in building a platform that enables
sharing of geospatial information, deploying the infrastructure for hosting
and sharing geospatial information, such as ArcGIS. Together with Esri,
PCI Geomatics is working to develop easy to use tools and offer solutions that will allow users to tap into those rich sources of historical data
mentioned above.
An oft overlooked, but critical step in extracting valuable information
from these varied sources of imagery is pre-processing. PCI supports the
Esri platform by offering automated means of co-registering raster layers
to each other in a completely automated manner – vector layers can also be
used as a reference – by bringing data into pixel-perfect alignment using a
well known environment (ArcGIS); non-remote sensing experts are empowered to discover applications of imagery that have not yet been created.
PCI’s extension, GeoImaging Tools for ArcGIS helps make this possible.
Recognizing the increasing use and interest in Radar-based Earth observai m a g i n g n o t es / / s u m m e r 2 0 1 1 / / w w w . i m a g i n g n o t es . c o m
B u si n ess
Pa r t n ers
Fo r
I m a gery
tion information, the company
is also working to make SAR
Analysis tools available for ArcGIS
users. Lastly, and perhaps most
interestingly, PCI is working to
deploy advanced, automated image
processing technology to the cloud,
making imagery, and accurate
analysis thereof, accessible and
available.
PCI Geomatics is a leader in
geoimaging products and solutions, delivering modular image
processing software, training, and
support services to government,
industry and academic clients
worldwide. For nearly 30 years, PCI
has been at the forefront of the geoimage processing software industry,
developing desktop software for
production workflows.
35
Shifting gearS
Scan with speed...
iP-S2
3D Mobile Mapping System
Engineered to operate at normal traffic speeds, the IP-S2 collects
precise vehicle position and bearing data while capturing spherical
imagery and georeferenced scans of roadway objects.
Revolutionize the way you collect anD Manage Data.
36
Scan to your mobile phone
Get the free mobile app, Tag Reader: http://gettag.mobi
topconpositioning.com/ips2
Dmapas Launches Topcon’s
IP-S2 in South America
Technology and Adventure Meet on a Global Scale
ESRI
B u si n ess
Mapas Digitales, S.A. (also known as Dmapas) is based in
Santiago, Chile. With more than 15 years of operations, the
company has become the leading provider of business solutions
based on digital map data, GIS solutions, and exact street address databases
for Chile, Argentina, and Peru. The company provides the most complete
and dynamic data, spatially organized to help their customers on their
business management. Dmapas databases cover more than 93 percent of the
populated areas in Chile. In 2009, Dmapas created the second countryspecific mapping product in South America.
Dmapas collected its vast pool of street map data with mobile digital
camera/GNSS receiver systems. These systems met the customers’ needs for
many years, but the company wanted to gain a competitive edge by adding
mobile LiDAR to their services.
Adding LiDAR to Dmapas’s customer-oriented solution equation
would provide a more accurate level of geopositioning for measurements
and feature mapping. In addition, LiDAR
point clouds can be exported for use in
CAD-based engineering software to create
profiles and cross sections of roadways.
Alfredo Escobar, Dmapas’s director
general, expressed interest in Topcon’s
IP-S2 and traveled to the United States for
a demonstration. Topcon’s mobile mapping
system uses a GNSS receiver and camera,
but also includes LiDAR laser scanners.
Escobar returned to Chile to seek projects
F ig u r e 1. Dmapas’ RAV4 with newly
for which LiDAR technology could be used.
installed IP-S2 at Agua Magallanes
Within months, the opportunity for a pilot
control center.
project became a reality. Dmapas was engaged
to perform a detailed mapping project for Aguas
Magallanes (www.aguasmagallanes.cl/), the
company that supplies water to the Antarctic and Magellan provinces of Chile.
Aguas Magallanes is headquartered in Punta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city in the world. The city is an 800-mile hop to the closest point
of land on the continent of Antarctica. Punta Arenas borders on the Strait
of Magellan. To manage and plan water distribution, Aguas Magallanes
needs updated street maps and road cross-sections of three cities — Punta
Arenas, Porvenir, and Puerto Natales. For the level of detail and degree of
accuracy required, Dmapas determined that the IP-S2’s combined LiDAR
and 360° spherical imagery would be the perfect solution.
As part of the IP-S2 deployment, Topcon provides onsite installation
and training. Richard Rybka, Topcon’s mobile mapping specialist, was
selected to assist in the project. Patrico Escobar, Dmapas’s operations
Pa r t n ers
Fo r
I m a gery
manager for Latin America, decided
to install the system onsite in Punta
Arenas rather than at headquarters
in Santiago to expedite work on the
project.
When the equipment arrived,
Aguas Magallanes provided the team
with space in one of their mechanical
shops. Installation of the IP-S2 and
mounting system on the vehicle was
completed in a day.
After the mapping project is
completed, Dmapas will provide
Aguas Magallanes with high-level
deliverables: LiDAR point clouds of
three project cities; cross sections
of 250 different streets for each
city; measurements; and Excel
reports. The services and products
that Dmapas can now provide to
customers using the IP-S2 would
have been impossible to produce
using GNSS and camera systems.
The story of Dmapas and their
venture into IP-S2 technology has
one more interesting twist. To
signify the change in Dmapas’s
operational technology and business model, the company will be
identified soon by a new name,
XYGO, demonstrating a new brand
to illustrate the personalized service
they bring to their clients.
See www.dmapas.com and
www.topconpositioning.com/ips2/.
37
Océ Provides 65 D-sized Maps/Hour
Printed, Dried, Cut and Coll ated
ESRI
B u si n ess
Pa r t n ers
Fo r
I m a gery
Now GIS users can have fast access to high quality
printed maps. This means they can discuss critical information with
project teams with greater speed and accuracy, and present information with the confidence that last minute details can be printed and distributed quickly. With the Océ ColorWave 600 printer, there is no longer a need to
wait for full coverage maps to process and print, or damp prints to dry.
Productivity is amazing with this flexible, easy-to-use wide format printer.
›› Easy job submission and powerful large-file
processing allows for quick access to critical
printed information
›› Fast print speeds and greater throughput – up to
65 D-sized maps per hour – due to the toner-based
system, means that more maps can be printed per
hour with no drying time.
›› A wide variety of supported media including
inexpensive 20 lb. bond paper, recycled paper, even
Tyvek media, mean GIS users can print project
team maps, presentations and water-resistant
field maps without time-consuming roll changes.
According to Larry Wachel, National Resources
Conservation Services, “The planning department used
to send an aerial map to the HP plotter. It would take
15 minutes to get across the network to the memory
in the plotter. Then 19 minutes to plot and 5 minutes
to dry – total of 38 minutes for the plot. With the Océ
[ColorWave] 600 printer, it takes 8 minutes to send and
receive the plot. No drying time saves 30 minutes per
plot.”
To find out more, visit www.oceusa.com/moremaps10 or call 800-714-4427.
Print Large Format
Color Maps and
Drawings Quickly,
on Plain Paper, with
Great Quality (and
waterfast, too).
No more printer bottlenecks
38
Productivity is extraordinary with the flexible, easy-to-use Océ ColorWave® 600
printer. One state DOT shortened their print time for fifty 42” x 42” maps from
11 hours on their inkjet printer to 1½ hours on the Océ ColorWave® 600 printer.
You can, too. To find out more, visit www.oceusa.com/moremaps11, or
call 800-714-4427.
©
2011 Océ
GEOEYE-1 .50-METER
J U LY 2 0 0 9
GEOEYE-1 .50-METER
FEB R U A R Y 2 01 1
Green Point Stadium, Cape Town, South Africa
© 2011 GeoEye. All Rights Reserved.
Change is constant.
Access a visual record to help you make better decisions.
GeoEye® provides GIS analysts and decision makers with easy, real-time access to today’s
most accurate high-resolution imagery. You can search our vast archive to compare
images over multiple timeframes. Keep a visual record of change as it happens with
GeoEye imagery and insight.
Elevating Insight for Better Decision Making
Download complimentary sample images to see for yourself.
Go to www.geoeye.com/change
39
INAUGURAL
The fully-assembled Soyuz has
undertaken its first “virtual” flight
and downrange mission trajector y
simulation at the Guiana Space Center.
The review of the workhorse mediumlift vehicle confirms its readiness to join
the Arianespace rocket family in 2011.
40
www.arianespace.com

CraterS Solar MapS GooGle earth Builder

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