Satellite Remote Sensing: Let The Games Begin
Planners in Atlantic prepare to use commercial remote sensing technolgies to control crowds at this summer's Olympic Games.
By Jim Dale

Over the 16 days beginning July 19, Atlanta will play host to what city planners are calling "the largest peacetime event in history" - the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. The games will bring millions of visitors to nearly two dozen venues spread around the Atlanta area (as many as 365,000 - the equivalent of three to four Superbowls - to the downtown area alone each day).
      To manage this, Olympic and city organizers face the task of coordinating upwards of 25,000 law enforcement officers, thousands more fire and emergency personnel, approximately 14,000 buses and drivers and untold thousands of people and automobiles.
      An Olympian effort? Certainly. Which is why planners are making extensive use of commercial remote imagery to better control what could be a logistics nightmare.
      "Just imagine the sheer numbers of people crowded together in a relatively small space. They won't be sure of the language - much less where they're going, or where to ask questions, or how to find a bathroom or telephone," says Joe Quirk, deputy program manager of Raytheon E-Systems Garland Division's Commercial Remote Sensing Systems Program - the group that provides the ground station processing for Olympic images. "Then heap on the scale of the Olympics. Planners need a quick way to monitor and control everything... Which exit ramps to use off the freeways, where to station police and fire response resources, how to time events so they don't overload the common areas," he adds.

A Herculean Challenge
According to many news sources, safety and security planning for the Atlanta Olympic Games has been the most thorough and complete of any event in history. Over the past five years, authorities have studied and planned for virtually any type of emergency, from bomb threats to natural disasters, and are confident that resources are in place for every contingency. The Department of Defense alone has budgeted a reported $35 million for Olympic security. Still, the potential for emergencies is significant.
      How can commercial remote sensing help planners to anticipate the problems and develop appropriate solutions? High-resolution panchromatic and multi-spectral images provided by Colorado-based Space Imaging Inc. and processed by Dallas-based Raytheon E-Systems, provide a seven-level processing system designed to yield the best image detail.

Seven Steps to Building an Olympic Image
Level 1: Radiometrically Corrected - removes platform distortions and corrects for variations in sensor light response. For large-area images the size of metropolitan Atlanta, clarity and light levels can differ significantly. Radiometric images can be useful in monitoring daily changes such as traffic patterns or crowd sizes in a format that essentially imitates an ultra-high-quality photograph.
      Level 2: Geometrically Corrected, but without the use of Ground Control Points (GCPs) - fixed points of reference on the ground. This corrects for distortion caused by the panoramic effect of large-area images and can be used in creating stereo images.
      Level 3: Geometrically Corrected using GCPs. Processing yields a much higher degree of precision, allowing controllers to extract features with 2 meters of horizontal accuracy. Using stereo pairs, viewers can measure terrain elevation and make highly accurate maps.
      Level 4: Orthorectified Imagery - applies advanced algorithms in a way that presents images taken from oblique angles in a "directly overhead" perspective. This technology gives Olympic planners the ability to plot power, telephone, gas and sewer lines, then map accurately to other Geographic Information System (GIS) products to create the most effective routes of entry/exit, emergency response and more. The standard product provides terrain elevation data to support up to 1:2,400-scale orthophotos.
      Level 5: Digital Terrain Matrices - allow users to plot terrain elevation throughout an image, based on information generated via stereo pairs. This gives Olympic planners the ability to create topographic maps to predict drainage, or study structures in three-dimensional representations.
      Level 6: Pansharpened Imagery. All images begin in five parts - 1-meter panchromatic plus four different spectral images (near infrared, red, green and blue) at resolutions of 4 meters. Pansharpening simply combines the panchromatic image with multispectral imagery to enable planners to interpret data in more ways using color and higher resolution. Multispectral bands provide emergency planners the opportunity to assign color to features such as streets, buildings, utilities, parking areas, etc.
      Level 7: Mosaics - merge many smaller images into one larger image to cover an entire area of interest, such as greater Atlanta. Advanced processing combines all the functions above plus integration to provide one seamless image with exceptional detail and resolution.

Applications in the Game of Commerce
Beyond the Olympics, Raytheon E-Systems is gearing up to meet the demands of an expected $2 billion market by the year 2000. Recent studies show that approximately two percent of the Earth's surface has been mapped using advanced remote sensing techniques - mostly urban areas like Atlanta. Tremendous opportunities exist to apply the time- and cost-saving potential of remote sensing to applications outside of urban and emergency planning. Like other companies, Raytheon E-Systems sees growth opportunities in areas as diverse as agricultural planning and management, resource monitoring, environmental control and real estate planning.
      "We feel the time is right to adapt our very advanced image processing, fusion and display technologies to create ways for people to do more in the commercial world," says Peter Marino, general manager for E-Systems Garland Division. Raytheon E-Systems has been a leading supplier of image processing and remote sensing systems to the U.S. government and defense communities for more than two decades.
      Because of its high data collection rates, the company's ground station capabilities will enable ecological and environmental monitors to gather up-to-the-minute information in a cost-effective way. Using multispectral or pansharpened imagery, land managers will be able to watch for erosion, help to prevent illegal mining or timber harvesting, detect oil spills or offshore dumping, prevent crop diseases and more.
      Raytheon E-Systems has organized its Commercial Remote Sensing (CRS) efforts into three strategic areas: participation in Space Imaging Inc. (a partnership with Lockheed Martin and Mitsubishi); ground station processing - the type of application used for the Olympics; and image data services, which leverages all other image processing capabilities the group has developed over its extensive history. These include image interpretation, algorithm development, mapping applications, multi-source fusion, and information management.
      One of the organization's distinguishing features is its legacy of building advanced image processing systems - a key technology that drives CRS ground station processing - based on genuine customer need, not speculation in order to meet emerging markets. "What we're doing now is exactly what we've been doing for a number of years," says Marino. "So we understand completely what our customers need when they tell us."
      Another differentiating strategy the company hopes will propel its entry to the market is a "mass production" mentality and methodology. "If you think of ground station processing in terms of producing an automobile, you'll find that there are lots of good people out there who can make a very good car one step at a time," says Gerry Schlak, senior CRS staff engineer at Raytheon E-Systems. "The key to commercial success is to learn to produce cars - or remote images - in an automated way. For remote imaging, using advanced systems to control work flow through the ground station - from data images to feature extraction - is the key," he continues.
      Raytheon E-Systems has been able to draw on a legacy of designing, building and integrating complex systems for a variety of applications to structure its ground station capabilities. Not just different processing algorithms, but different ways to link and use the algorithms, leads to throughputs in excess of 1,000 images per day. High data rates - 320 megabits per second, compared to 80-100 megabits per second used by many existing operators - are one part of the automation solution.

Passing the Torch
As applications like the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta continue to demand the kind of high quality, full function mapping and coordination capabilities provided by Commercial Remote Sensing, producers like Raytheon E-Systems will continue to develop the dual-use features of ground station processing to meet a wider variety of needs. Increasingly, users will find that CRS can provide significantly more comprehensive and timely information - especially in hard-to-reach areas like national parks and the vast areas of public land inaccessible by road - than conventional aerial photography or land-based mapping.
      "It's inevitable that things are going to move this way," says Quirk. "The challenge is simply of a matter of getting to market with the right solution that people can use now for immediate results. For Raytheon E-Systems, this is not just a matter of getting to the market; it's more an issue of letting the market know that the company is there - and it's been there since before there really was a commercial market," he adds.
      In the race to determine which companies will take the early lead in the emerging CRS marketplace, one thing is certain: whoever gets there first with the right combination of product, experience, engineering know-how and people resources usually wins.
      Let the games begin.

About the Author:
Jim Dale is owner of Dale & Associates Creative Communications, a full-service firm specializing in high technology marketing and communications. Based in Dallas, Jim writes on topics ranging from military and defense to computing and telecommunications. He may be reached at 214-393-1956 (phone), 214-393-1138 (fax), or [email protected] (e-mail).

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