The highlight of the 2003 New England GITA (NEGITA) fall meeting "The Use of Imagery with GIS" was a panel discussion, moderated by Gerry Reymore of Early Endeavors, titled, "The Future of Imagery and GIS." The panelists included Gerry Kinn of Applanix, which is owned by Trimble, Ray Corson of James W. Sewell Company, and Gerald Arp who was with Space Imaging at the time and is now with Booz Allen Hamilton. Kinn provided an introduction by highlighting three trends in airborne imagery.

First, he noted the emergence of "designer" sensors. These are sensors geared to capture very specific types of data, in contrast to the more broadly used imaging and thermal sensors now used on planes and satellites. As an example, he cited a sensor under development at Rochester Institute of Technology that will detect very small fires. Such sensors will become more and more popular in the next five to ten years, Kinn argued.

A second trend Kinn termed "direct geopositioning," essentially the ability to create engineering level accuracy without ground control. Trimble is currently developing such technology. One group that might find such a technology disconcerting is surveyors. But Kinn was quick to point out that surveyors will always have the upper hand since they have the legal authority to interpret and use such data, just as today they interpret data from other sources, such as total stations and GPS receivers.

The third trend is the pent-up demand for GIS data. The graph illustrates a fast growing GIS marketplace. Growth, by Kinn's numbers, runs about 30% per year. On the other hand, remote sensing growth is just a bit better than flat. The gap between the two is pent up demand for GIS data that remote sensing is not filling. What other technologies are filling that gap? Other data capture technologies, particularly GPS, says Kinn. The remote sensing community is not delivering, due in part to the lack of tools for automated extraction of features (buildings, impervious surfaces, etc.) from imagery, he argues.

That brought us to the questions for the panel:

1  What is the impact of federal mandates and activities on remote sensing?

ARP: The government has driven the commercial satellite remote sensing with the ClearView and more recent NextView contracts. These are essentially ways for the commercial sector to "fill in" for a dearth of spy satellites. The government is not severely limiting resolution as it's already granted licenses for 1/2 meter satellite images and made provisions for 1/4 meter coverage. The government has also made it clear that it's trying to avoid sole source contracts (that is, providing a contract to a single vendor without competition) but prefers competition, which provides better quality, coverage, and price.

That said, despite the Open Skies policy, which allows freedom to capture data wherever one can fly, there are some government restrictions on what kind of data may be sold to whom (the denied persons list). For example, Space Imaging can't sell imagery with less than 2-meter resolution of Israel. And, the company can't sell imagery to Saddam Hussein and his peers. Interestingly, imagery vendors can provide data, for instance, of Cuba to Cuba.

KINN: Airborne imaging is like the "wild west" in comparison to satellite imagery. The latter receives government funding and has to obey lots of restrictions from government and nature. The airborne companies, in contrast, have limited funding: a million dollars is quite a lot of development money while satellite folks receive several million at a pop. We are "grubbing the low end." But, we do have some definite advantages: we can land, fix, or replace a sensor, develop a designer sensor, and we need not worry about Kepler's Laws of Motion or even high altitude clouds.

NGA [National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which was up until recently known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency] is actively looking at airborne imaging to augment satellites, though that work is not as heavily funded. Still, there are some quick turn around solutions that should be available soon that will turn heads. For example, technology that allows the delivery of orthophotos as the plane lands may be available in the next year or year-and-a- half.

2 How do privacy issues play into imaging?

ARP: It's odd that privacy concerns are always raised when discussing satellite data, though aerial imagery has far greater resolutions and potential for capturing data that citizens might consider private. Satellite imagery is outside the threshold of personal privacy. Users, public and private, say they want higher and higher resolution, but in fact, few of the imagery purchasers want to process or receive that much data.

CORSON: We have not seen any problems with file sizes and resolutions. In fact, most of our clients are requiring higher pixel resolutions in an attempt to see more detail. Storage space has become inexpensive, making greater resolutions less of an issue.

KINN: It's not so much that we don't want to process or deliver the data; computers are fast and hard drives inexpensive. Instead the issue is the shear amount of raw data turned over to the agencies. As resolution increases, data size goes up as the square, so we are talking about huge data assets. The agencies can't go through it in a meaningful way.

As for privacy, Emerge did a lot of agricultural data capture. Those whose fields were included often asked if we'd be "sharing the data." They were concerned that they might get into trouble with the government since they were growing something they should not. They were particularly concerned that we were making a permanent record of their actions. Privacy goes out the window when you break the law.

3 What changes will we see in delivery-both methods and formats?

ARP: CDs, DVDs, and hard disks won't be going away too soon because Web-based delivery systems still have difficulties delivering very large data sets in reasonable periods of time. We've pretty much standardized on GeoTIFF for delivery. And, most of the government's special formats are losing favor.

KINN: Expect JPEG2000 to be a player soon.

4 With the world as it is, should we expect more government intervention in the coming months and years?

ARP: Actually, we should expect the opposite, as the government's already granting 1/2 and 1/4 meter licenses. The government seems to have concluded that the benefits outweigh the liabilities. That may well be why the Iraqis put their materials underground.

CORSON: There are other ways to make data available but less useful for terrorists. It's possible, for example, to retain relative accuracy, but "play with" absolute accuracy.

5 Does the government have "better" imaging systems than the private sector?

ARP: I don't know and if I did I couldn't tell you. That said, TV and movies do exaggerate quite a bit. Thanks to Hollywood, we get calls from local police departments asking for an image of a particular street on a particular day, hoping we "caught" a robber running down the street. Besides, if someone wants higher resolution than we can provide, an airplane can usually do far better, assuming it can safely reach the geography of interest. One must presume that if the government has licensed commercial satellite companies to go to half-meter resolution, then their systems are still even better.

6 What should we expect regarding data packaging, delivery and licensing?

KINN: The aerial imagery marketplace is quite fragmented. It's tough to make "shrink wrapped boxed products" and sell them to many customers. What we do, essentially, is create custom products. And, to date, no one has figured out how to make 10 cents on each use of an image. We need to do what Kodak did with those little yellow boxes of film: make them ubiquitous and make a profit on each one.

As the entire imagery market matures, we are more likely to see a few bigger firms providing consumer level products/services. So, how will a future imagery company make money? Say sometime in the future you go to

Wal-Mart to buy grass seed and fertilizer. New regulations limit the amount of fertilizer you can use on your property to cut water pollution. The salesperson uses a Web service to check out the size of your lawn via an image, then provides you with the right amount. You pay no more, but Wal-Mart sends a few pennies to the imagery company.

As for licensing, aerial imagery has a shelf life similar to bread. It's very tasty when fresh, but less and less interesting as it ages. Licensing will change to take that into consideration, but licensing will not go away.

ARP: Our licensing in the past was quite challenging. We've changed it accordingly so that our licensing is much simpler for "new" data. By the way, our images are already at Wal-Mart, in some of the video games. The new licensing takes advantage of the fact that in a few years the game maker will come back to us for up-to-date imagery for the cities covered in the games. In general our licensing is less and less restrictive, especially with the government customer.

CORSON: We actually have a historical film archive of many of the areas we've flown over the years dating back to the 1950s. A large percentage of our clients are interested in historical photography and mapping. The big challenge for us is being able to access this information digitally. We are scanning the archive film and creating metadata for it so we can find the images of interest in a massive project.

7 How will "designer sensors" play out?

KINN: Digital imagery is not being driven by remote sensing, but rather by other uses, such as taking pictures of Aunt Martha. What's happening in our corner is taking the off-the-shelf results of advances in other areas, and bolting them together to create "exotic" sensors. These might be used to sense specific targets like the ones currently in development at the Rochester Institute of Technology to sense tiny fires. Or, we might use multiple cameras to mimic the coverage and resolution of a single large "chip" that may be very expensive or not even exist. At some point sensors may be specialized enough to fly one mission and be retired. Of course, that's possible in aerial imaging, but not on satellites.

ARP: I don't agree with the designer view. In the commercial area the only change is in resolution, there is not a large push to add bands. To that end it is interesting to note that the latest satellite out of India, the P-6, [also known as ResourceSat] launched in October 2003 includes a green, red, and infrared band, but no blue! And there's no hyperspectral as there is not enough demand for it; it's too specialized for a commercial satellite.

The commercial market, which for us means primarily the government, is pushing exactly this type of trend.

8 How will LiDAR play into imaging?

KINN: Unlike imagery of a city, 95% of a DEM doesn't move over time. So, LiDAR doesn't require the refresh rate needed for say municipal applications. That said, "exotic" uses for LiDAR are on the horizon such as measuring crop height and canopy depth.

9 What can we expect when we need coverage of say a county, on demand?

ARP: Back a few years that was quite a challenging task. Over the years we've learned to "fly" the satellite and deliver those types of products. We are getting much better at that type of work.

10 What's the future of imagery prices?

KINN: Prices are certainly coming down. Other markets for "high tech" products suggest that specialized uses of technology give way in time to commercial uses and ultimately to consumer uses, with a corresponding drop in price. Consider what has happened with computers, for example. In GIS, we are dropping down to consumer products in services like MapQuest, but the business model for remote sensing is still unclear.

ARP: I agree that prices are coming down, but products will remain primarily custom. A few years ago we offered digital ortho quads. We expected to make a killing from people who wanted a picture of their house. Bottom line: it was a big yawn. We haven't found that niche. In point of fact, even our "standard products" are still custom.

KINN: The big issue is still that we offer data, raw data. We've not figured out how to offer the answer to the question, that is, information. That's why I think we keep coming back to the idea of automated extraction as a key tool to open the market. It can help change this raw data into information.