MoreZ/I Imaging Corporation, an Intergraph company in Huntsville, Ala., announced the company's Digital Mapping Camera (DMC) has successfully captured imagery of New Mexico's San Juan River Basin in its first North American operational mission. The mission completed by 3001 Inc., the camera operator and a leading supplier of aerial mapping services and digital data to federal and local governments, delivered large-format multispectral and panchromatic digital imagery for a project designed to assess irrigated lands and test new technologies for an anticipated update to New Mexico's Digital Ortho Quarter Quad maps.
The photoflight covered more than 700 noncontiguous square miles along the New Mexico-Colorado border and was geared toward mapping irrigated lands. 3001 Inc. flew the project at 8,500 feet (AGL) to achieve a raw pixel resolution of 0.85 feet and an image scale of 1 inch = 1,800 feet. After fully analytical aerial triangulation, ground accuracy was certified to meet ASPRS standards for 1 inch = 300 feet horizontal accuracy. With the sensor's 12-bit radiometric resolution, the highly reflective terrain's ground features and details were equally visible in shadows and bare soil.
To complete the project, Bohannon Huston Inc. (BHI) received post-processed datasets - natural color, near-infrared and black and white - generated from the DMC software, just days after flight completion and seamlessly downloaded the data into its ImageStation softcopy photogrammetry system for immediate processing.
The DMC received praise for image accuracy and speed of processing from all parties involved - the end user, New Mexico state government; prime project mapping contractor, BHI; and camera operator, 3001 Inc.
Bohannon Huston Inc. estimated that two to three weeks could be cut from the overall processing time for a project of this scope with the DMC as compared to film. In terms of actual staff and computer time, processing is reduced by 20 percent. The visual results are better than film - there is no grain or distortion, and edges are extremely sharp.
Gar Clarke, GIS Coordinator, New Mexico Office of State Engineer, said, "We ended up getting three datasets for the price of one. And we were amazed at how fast the products were made available."
Z/I Imaging's DMC, the industry's most innovative and precise turnkey digital camera system, delivers large-scale images with high geometric resolution. The system is comprised of four parallel cameras generating multispectral imagery for the acquisition of color composites and four high resolution panchromatic cameras acquiring imagery that is digitally processed in order to form a single, large-format multispectral frame. The DMC can perform a wide range of aerial survey mission types and is capable of ground resolutions better than two inches. The sensor model of the DMC is based on the central perspective image, which allows processing of data in all existing exploitation systems.
Source: Z/I Imaging, Nov. 13, 2003
