Number 211 - December 2000

Maps From Space Excerpt from article "Location, Location, Location"
by Brian & Jeffrey Ambroziak, Adobe Magazine Sep-Oct 2000
Don't look up now, but you're on Candid Camera--of the outer-space variety, anyway. Companies such as SpaceImaging, EarthWatch, and ORBIMAGE have lofted cameras into space on the backs of orbiting satellites, which are, as you read this, capturing high-resolution imagery of the entire earth. Though the satellites' one-meter resolution cannot actually identify individual people, it can let you distinguish easily recognizable objects such as buildings, swimming pools, roads, cars and trucks, and even the white stripes in crosswalks.     Such detailed imagery can provide cartographers with extremely accurate digital elevation models [DEMs], which they can use to display steepness, slope direction, and contours in topographic maps. Digital maps of the future might combine the symbols of roadways and landscapes with satellite imagery,	giving you up-to-date views of construction, for example, or flooding.     And the ease of finding such images on the Web is remarkable. Brian Soliday, vice president of Space-Imaging's North American sales and marketing, notes that "technology for delivery of imagery via the Internet is advancing rapidly. Although the tools exist for the power user, you don't have to be a GIS or mapping expert to find an image from space. All that's needed is a basic understanding of geography or the name of a nearby landmark." Indeed, on SpaceImaging's Web site (www.spaceimaging.com). you'll eventually be able to type in an address and date range to bring up an aerial color photograph, which you can then purchase. In the meantime, you can go to the Terraserver site at www.terraserver.microsoft.com to take an alien's view of Area 51, or find, by taking a "balloon ride" over your old town, the rooftop of your childhood home.
Number 211 - December 2000