Images IKONOS have revolutionized the forms of use of satelite products. Because IKONOS is the first commercial satellite that provides a 1 m spatial resolution, we have the possibility of defining the types of standars for high resolution images. Through these images, AEROTERRA offers more than just simple data, since it offers valuable information that will help the clients to make decisions on the base from a daily cap.

Through the use of products made by IKONOS and other satellites such as Landsat, it is now possible:

Farmers can monitor with more precision the condition and vitality of their crops and predict with greater wisdom their harvest volumes; besides, they can prevent problems and save significant amounts of money through early state determination.

Environmental Scientists can predict trends in areas of high environmental fragility.

The government officials can monitor, evaluate and plan policies for specific types of land use.

Urban Planners can assess the progress of comunal housig plans and the insurance companies can measure and map damages to properties after a natural disaster.

Geologists no longer need to rely on aerial surveys for geological-structural interpretations. Based on the possibility that IKONOS offers to generate products with high level of resolution and stereoscopic coating, these images are comparatively more advantageous tan the aerial photographs.

The different images generated by IKONOS sensors have, for certain applications, some advantages regarding aerial photographs, including:

• Better metric and geometric quality since the aerial photographs originally are not geometrically correct products. With IKONOS products is possible to obtain an orthoimage that covers the interesting area, from a single earth control point, redusing significantly the time of processing. These control points can be selected by existing precise information (roads intersection, seismic lines, oil wells, infraestructure works, etc).

• In general they dont require union process of different images (mosaics)

• Keep tonality and contrast uniformity related with the atmospheric condition stabilities during the period of satellite capture.
  
• Allow the display and traditional stereoscopic interpretation, and the posibility of making stereo digital analysis.
  
• Unlike aerial photographs, it’s not necessary the lateral overlapping, with which it is optimized the costs of the pairs, at the same time it is easier the management of the same and consistent interpretation

• The stereoscopic digital interpretation facilitates the survey and the integration of information into a geo-referenced database, enabling the overlay and spatial modeling.

• Allow the use of different combinations of spectral bands, including infrared products, which significantly increases the capabilities of differentiation and discrimination.

• They are more versatile and less expensive at the time of extraction of information through digital processing, such as filtered directional detection structures, as classifications or bands relations oriented to lithological discrimination.

• Allows you to obtain high-quality mapping at different scales and band combinations, from compositions of maps that include different overlapping theme layers, cartographic symbols, legends, and so on.

AEROTERRA offers a diversity of products related with captured images by the powerful IKONOS satellite, including different resolution images:

Panchromatic 1-meter
Allows users to distinguish features with dimensions as small as 1 m.

Multispectral Color 4-meters
Allows users to distinguish features with dimensions as small as 4 m, from information taken in three bands of the visible spectral (blue, green, red) and infrared.

Pan-Sharpened
This product digitally combines the panchromatic images of 1 meter of resolution with the 4 meter multispectral images, giving a new product that has the advantage of having a resolution of 1 m and with the high spectral resolution (higher discrimination) of the bands of the visible or/and infrared, which it becomes a product much more superior to any image of the currently operational satellites.

Pan-Sharpened IKONOS image 1-m of a sector of the Gran Buenos Aires

The framed area corresponds to the supermarket building of Carrefour of San Isidro.

Which is the best tool for the non declared constructions detection?

Google Earth: Myth or Reality?

Traditionally the projects of cadastral update, including the detection of improvements with tax levying purposes has been made through photogrammetric techniques based on stereoscopic (3D) models of photography’s conventional areas, B&W or color, being the scale the most determinant of the precision of the features to capture. Most recently, the incorporation of the high resolution satellite images with stereo capacity, and digitals, it open the door to new product, standard procedures and obtaining information.

In a recent journalistic note published on last August 27 on the Diario La Nación, the Subsecretary of Public Income of the Province of Buenos Aires, Santiago Montoya, stressed that the Income Direction detected non declared properties for almost 187 million pesos through de utilization of the program Google Earth.

The objective of this note is to present to our clients and users a description and comparison of both methods, including scope, limitations, equipment, costs and other considerations.

Read more here.

The IKONOS satellite is the first satellite of commercial type that allows the image capture with a meter of special resolution. IKONOS comer from greek and it means “image”.

This images are a direct consequence of the technologic liberation promoted on 1994 by the Government of the United States of America. Previously to this time this technology was available for satellites with military purposes.

IKONOS collects information of any area, on average twice a day, covering areas of 20.000 km2 in a single pass and producing as a result 1 meter resolution images every three days and 4 meter resolution images every day.

IKONOS satellite weights 720 kg and orbit the Earth every 98 minutes at an altitude of almost 680 km in a synchronized way with the Sun, passing over a particular place approximately at 10:30 a.m. local time. The orbit covered by the satellite focuses away from the area directly beneath itself, and the data of a particular place can be captured almost in a daily bases, although not in all cases with 1 meter resolution. The satellite was design and fabricated by the company Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Systems.

Raytheon build the systems of terrestrial support, digital geoprocessing, managing files and client services, required for information distribution captures by IKONOS.

The digital image sensor of the satellite it was designed to produce images with elevated contrasts, special resolution and precision, offering the clients an accurate and clear product. The company Eastman Kodak provide the mechanism electro-optical, including blending with the optical telescope, the detectors and its adjustment to the focal plane, also including the electronic processing mechanism of high speed based on a design made by Space Imaging.

Becoming a success, the images of high resolution of IKONOS satellite are a great reality and are revolutionizing the satellite market. Previously, no commercial satellite achieved such a level of detail.