| FILM & DIGITAL IMAGERY LIBRARIES
Our division offices have extensive film libraries consisting of millions of images collected over many years. Images documenting communities, major transportation corridors, major events, and normal growth and development can be reproduced in digital and printed formats. Orthophotography and digital mosaics are available for many different areas. We also offer custom prints and posters from our archive of unusual obliques. Obliques gallery...
PHOTOLAB
Several Aero-Metric division offices are equipped with traditional film processing capabilities as well as large format plotters for high quality film and digital imagery reproduction. We offer prints ranging from four to 54 inches wide as well as precision scanning and custom mounting and framing.
IMAGE PROCESSING
Images are available in many different resolutions and in a variety of media. Our skilled technicians can take high quality imagery and create:
- Rectified Enlargements - Aerial image product corrected for aircraft tip/tilt & scale.
- Digital Orthophotography
- Photo Mosaics - A series of overlapping aerial photos that form a composite image of a larger area.
- Digital Aerial Image Files - Image data on compact disc.
DIGITAL MAPPING CAMERA
Aero-Metric owns a Z/I Imaging Digital Mapping Camera (DMC) system to provide digital imagery for image processing and photogrammetric engineering applications. With the DMC, we can capture digital imagery with ground sample distance (GSD or pixel size) as small as two inches. The leading-edge technology of the DMC enables rapid automated production of high quality products that satisfy our most demanding customers. The technical advantage of the DMC's 12-bit imagery ensures extremely accurate geometry for producing the exact results needed in automated mensuration, aerotriangulation and orthophotography production. More detail in both shadow and highlight areas of the imagery are much better than was previously possible with film-based photography. The DMC’s eight camera heads consist of four parallel cameras generating multi-spectral imagery (red, green, blue and near-infrared bands) for the acquisition of natural color and color infrared composites. Also, four converging panchromatic cameras acquire imagery that is digitally interwoven to form a single image with the same ground coverage. The sensor model of the DMC is based on the central perspective image, which permits use of the data in all existing processing systems.
LIDAR
Lidar technology offers one of the most accurate, expedient and cost-effective ways to capture wide-area elevation information. With increased data collection rates and accuracy, Optech's new ALTM 3100EA system (EA stands for Enhanced Accuracy) is regarded as the best model available today. The system will produce horizontal accuracies of 1/5500 of the altitude compared with 1/2000 from the previous 30/70 system. Vertical accuracies of less than 5cm are possible at 500 meters above ground, ranging to less than 20cm at 3 kilometers altitude. Lidar data sets contain vast amounts of information. Buildings, trees and power lines are individually discernible features. This data is digital and is directly processed to produce detailed bare earth DEMs at vertical accuracies of 0.15 meters to 1 meter. Derived products include contour maps, slope/aspect, three-dimensional topographic images, virtual reality visualizations and more. More on lidar...
SATELLITE IMAGERY
Aero-Metric, Inc. is an authorized reseller for GeoEye, the largest commercial satellite company in the world. We can supply 1-meter panchromatic and 4 meter multispectral imagery acquired by the IKONOS satellite. Stereo imagery is also available for DEM generation. In addition, GeoEye’s high resolution satellite, GeoEye-1 has been launched and is in operation. This is currently the highest resolution commercial satellite in orbit with .41-meter pan and 1.64-meter multispectral resolutions.
Aero-Metric is also an authorized reseller for SPOT Image Corp. The SPOT constellation includes SPOT 2, SPOT 4 and SPOT 5. SPOT 5 also has its HRS instrument, which is designed for economical DTM generation of large areas. SPOT 5 is capable of up to 2.5-meter and 5-meter panchromatic and 10-meter multispectral. SPOT 5 is particularly well suited for timber, vegetation and geological applications with its short wave infra red (SWIR) band.
SPOT’s entry into the very high resolution market will occur in 2010 and 2011 when they will launch 2 very high resolution satellites. These will be known as Pleiades-1 and 2. These satellites will have a 50-cm pixel resolution for the panchromatic band, while the 4-band multispectral imagery will have a resolution of 2 meters.
The Formosat-2 satellite is well suited for change detection in the northern latitudes with its daily revisits. In areas between about 60° north and 60° south there is not complete coverage since this satellite follows the same exact orbit every day.
We also provide imagery from many other satellite solutions including Landsat, RADARSAT, and TerraSAR-X.
MULTISPECTRAL/DMSV
Our SpecTerra Systems DMSV Mk-1 sensor is a compact, lightweight, four CCD sensor system for acquisition of high-resolution digital imagery. Its high spatial and spectral resolution enables four pre-selected bands to be acquired simultaneously in the visible to near infrared region (0.4 - 1.0 microns). Spatial resolution is in the range of 0.5-4.0 meter pixels, depending on height above terrain. Image size is 578 by 740 pixels. The instrument uses band-pass filters, typically with bandwidths from 10-80 nanometers (nm). Standard filters emulate Landsat Thematic Mapper imagery. The four filters are centered on 485nm, 560nm, 660nm, and 830nm.
IFSAR
Aero-Metric is a distributor for Intermap Technologies' STAR-3i data and value added products including digital elevation models, orthorectified radar images, topographic line maps, and other custom map products. STAR-3i is an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) mounted in a Learjet 36A aircraft. Like LIDAR, it is a ranging system that measures distances based on the time it takes for the radar beam to read the target and return to the antenna. This system is capable of collecting GT1, GT2 and GT3 level DEM data at a rate of up to 100Km2/hour. STAR-3i IFSAR DEMs have a 0.5-3 meter vertical accuracy, 2.5-meter horizontal accuracy and 5-meter posting. The products owe their incredible accuracy, resolution and economy to a breakthrough technology in the mapping industry. |
