|
Orthorectified
(scale corrected) imagery is a key source of interpreted feature information
for The National Map, and is an archive medium in its own right for
portraying data that does not lend itself to extraction and symbolization. Imagery comes from a variety of sources
now, including the commercial satellite remote sensing business that is being
built. There are debates about whether
or not this industry will be successful, but the fact is that private firms
now have licenses to collect high-resolution satellite data, at 1 meter and
even .5 meter ground resolution. And
whether it’s today’s business model or some other business model, we believe
that there is going to be widely available high resolution imagery from
satellites and other sources well within the 2010 time frame. Image data will underpin the National Map
and give us an accurate and current base to work from.
|
