Airborne Digital Imagery: Fuel for GIS Growth in the 21st Century

Author: Gerry J. Kinn
Organization: Emerge

900 Technology Park Drive
Building 8
Billerica, MA, KY 40506-0027

Phone: 978-262-0653
Fax: 978-262-0700
gjkinn@emerge.wsicorp.com

Orthoimagery from airborne digital remote sensing systems provides fuel to accelerate the growing GIS applications market. Simultaneous airborne acquisition of digital imagery and navigation data coupled with semiautomated orthorectification and mosaicking on the ground provides the following benefits over traditional production processes:

Fast turnaround
Lower cost
Wide area coverage
Repeatable radiometry
Excellent geometric accuracy

Emergency response requiring orthorectified, geolocated imagery in near real time is possible. Digital imagery is more repeatable radiometrically than film, supporting exploitation of spectrally based image classification. Geometric accuracy, wide area coverage, and lower cost push advances in traditional applications.