Bloggage update: Time-aware maps are a very handy way to boil down complex data sets that involve time component. I recently posted maps on arcgis on desktop and smartphone, static results of ‘traveling salesman’ geoprocessing on the desktop or online.Now we can post time-aware maps directly to arcgis, and I thought I’d try it first on my popular “Where in the ...

Getmapping has acquired an additional Microsoft UltraCam Eagle digital survey camera which adds both greater data capture capacity and capabilities. The camera will be used for both Getmapping’s own busy data capture schedules and be available for rent under one of the company’s flexible rental schemes.

This is the second UltraCam Eagle purchased by Getmapping but the first with a 210mm lens. The Eagle’s interchangeable lens system provides great flexibility and is specifically designed for high-resolution digital aerial photography. The 210mm lens enables imagery to be captured at 12.5 cm resolution from an altitude of 16,000 feet (4,875 metres). Notably this is well above most Air Traffic Control (ATC) restrictions which often thwart scheduled flying above key cities, busy air routes and areas of high military activity. 

The UltraCam Eagle can capture full RGB and Near Infrared (NIR) imagery at up to 2cm resolution. It takes up less aircraft space due to solid state hard drives and its reduced payload improves aircraft fuel economy. The system will support our UK and African operations and will be available for worldwide rental.

Getmapping continues to offer a range of flexible camera rental options which will help link costs directly to revenue generated. Rental options include access to the latest cameras, including the Microsoft UltraCam Eagle with a choice of 100mm or 210mm lens and the Visionmap A3 system. The rental options include:

• Standard System Rental - camera system rental for a fixed period for a fixed fee. 
• Flexible Rental - camera system rental for an agreed duration with a reduced fixed fee, plus a fee per kilometre of data captured.
• Pay As You Go - camera system rental on a ‘pay as you go’ (per kilometre captured) basis, subject to minimum targets.
• Integrated Solution - camera system rental plus image processing also available as a full ‘pay as you go’ per kilometre solution.

We have found the Microsoft UltraCam series to be exceptionally reliable during the nine years that we have been flying them said Martin Tocher, Getmapping’s Operations Director. The 210mm lens is likely to be a real asset and should help us overcome most ATC restrictions and make the best use of the limited weather opportunities here in the UK,” continued Tocher.

Astun Technology is delighted to announce that it has won a  contract to supply a wide ranging GIS solution that will serve power and casual users of GIS software within the Council, partners in the MKi Observatory and the public through the Council’s website. The solution is underpinned by a fully featured Open Source spatial data warehouse that will provide access to the full range of Ordnance Survey base mapping, as well as the Council’s own mission critical data layers. The solution will also help the Council to meet its INSPIRE obligations.

This GIS refresh includes the adoption of QGIS Open Source software for power users. The remaining requirements are provided by Astun Technology’s iShare platform. iShare provides a fully featured public facing map portal with the ability to embed maps within web pages complete with location based searches, ‘find my nearest’ and incident reporting features.  Additionally iShare, will deliver GIS capabilities to users across the Council’s intranet, the MKi Observatory and via the Internet to mobile and homeworkers.  The whole Milton Keynes solution is delivered under an Open Enterprise Agreement which includes initial and ongoing training, consultancy and maintenance together with formal support contracts for the Open Source components.

“We are really looking forward to working with Milton Keynes Council on this exciting and prestigious project said Mike Saunt, Managing Director of Astun Technology. We will be making the most of Open Source technologies to deliver a hybrid solution tailored to the Council’s precise GIS needs,” continued Saunt.

Getmapping imagery has been used extensively in a recent survey of brownfield sites in the Thames Gateway, Europe’s largest regeneration area. The resulting report published by the wildlife charity Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust, highlights the alarming loss of habitats supporting rare species and nationally important invertebrate populations. 

Between and Buglife with Natural England carried out an extensive survey of the Thames Gateway area mapping over 450 sites and identifying 198 brownfield sites of high and medium importance for invertebrates. Brownfield sites are becoming increasingly important by providing refuges and links to other habitats to sustain biodiversity. In the Thames Gateway brownfield sites 15 priority species were identified some of which are not found elsewhere in the UK. 

Ironically the main threat to biodiversity in these areas, which nature has so successfully reclaimed, is regeneration which is focused primarily on brownfield land. The Buglife report has identified substantial losses of important brownfield sites as a result of new development and the failure of brownfield safeguards within the planning system. The report recommends a higher level of protection for brownfield sites of biodiversity value to ensure they are not developed in the future. 

For the recent survey work Getmapping supplied aerial imagery of the whole Thames Gateway area, as a seamless layer delivered via a WMS feed. “Having the imagery as a WMS feed is really convenient,” said Jamie Robins from Buglife. “We simply subscribe to the feed from within our GIS and have immediate access to a seamless layer of high resolution imagery. There is no data to manage, and no servers to update. Much of the imagery was very up to date and even in areas where the imagery was older we still had a very useful layer that we could use to zoom into individual sites to assess and prioritise for a visit. The original 198 sites were re-categorised as intact, partially destroyed, completely destroyed or having planning permission granted, continued Robins.

“This is a great example of supplying wide area aerial imagery in the most convenient way,” said Dave Horner, Managing Director of Getmapping. “WMS has really taken off in the last few years enabling direct feeds from hosted datasets, relieving organisations of their IT overhead and data management issues. We now have a wealth of data available as a WMS feed including our own up to date and archived layers of aerial imagery plus the complete stacks of Ordnance Survey PSMA and OpenData mapping.”

The full Buglife report: ‘The state of brownfields in the Thames Gateway’ 

AeroGRID is now supplying wide area aerial imagery of Europe via a WMS feed to satellite image provider RapidEye AG. The high resolution imagery covers 21 European countries over nearly 4 million km².

WMS is the standard protocol for streaming georeferenced map imagery over the Internet to web based applications, GIS and CAD software. WMS feeds load the imagery that a user needs to see, so it is a very convenient and efficient way for clients to subscribe to AeroGRID’s growing library of high resolution imagery. Users can confidently base their projects on AeroGRID data, which always comes with guaranteed accuracy due to long-term partnerships with well-established aerial survey companies.

“Our business requires access to precise orthophotos with an accuracy of better than 3m, and AeroGRID’s WMS service provides us with this imagery in an easy and cost effective way,” said Massimilano Vitale, RapidEye’s Chief Operating Officer.

“This contract exemplifies our core strengths” commented Miles Taylor, AeroGRID’s General Manager. “We provide unequalled wide area coverage for our clients with unparalleled accuracy and are playing a leading role in the development and wider adoption of WMS amongst the GIS community.”

About AeroGRID

AeroGRID is a one-stop-shop for international archived aerial imagery providing speedy access to aerial photography from over 60 countries with off-the-shelf high resolution satellite orthophotos for many others. By marshalling an impressive network of partner’s survey aircraft and high resolution digital cameras AeroGRID is able to extend coverage around the world. AeroGRID’s WMS servers provide instant access to orthophotos for 14 million km² from 23 countries in Europe, America and Africa with more countries added every month.

About RapidEye

RapidEye is a leading provider of high-resolution satellite imagery. With a constellation of five Earth Observation satellites, RapidEye is able to image up to five million square kilometers of earth every day, and adds over one billion square kilometers of imagery to its archive every year. Online searching and viewing of its collection is quick and easy with EyeFind, RapidEye's archive discovery tool.

Paris, France, 2nd October – Astrium Services’ GEO-Information and AeroGRID Ltd have signed a partnership for the distribution of Astrium GEO satellite imagery products. Users in the European Union can consequently resort to an additional source for accessing Astrium’s substantial portfolio of optical satellite data, as well as SPOTMaps mosaics available over more than 95 million km².

AeroGRID customers will have access to data from Astrium’s unique satellite fleet comprising the SPOT 5 and 6 optical satellite family and the high-resolution Pléiades constellation.  Through this agreement AeroGRID will not only offer its customers worldwide coverage of Astrium data at a variety of resolutions but also access to Astrium’s substantial portfolio of geo-information products, services and customised solutions.

Through this agreement, AeroGRID becomes part of Astrium’s global geo-information services Channel Partner Network.

Another significant release done at FOSS4G is the open source GeoServer 2.4. Along with MapServer, GeoServer is a popular server to disseminate geospatial data in WMS, and other standards of the same family.

Since I failed to find a nice list of what's new specifically for version 2.4, I feed you with a reminder of what GeoServer is according to their front page: "GeoServer is an open source software server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geospatial data. Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from any major spatial data source using open standards. [...] GeoServer is the reference implementation of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Coverage Service (WCS) standards, as well as a high performance certified compliant Web Map Service (WMS). GeoServer forms a core component of the Geospatial Web."

[since the weather radar mosaic has been proven very popular, I felt it deserved it's own announcement]

Part of the sister announcement of the global and regional weather prediction  layers, in GeoMet services, there's also the popular weather radar North-American mosaic. It covers United States and Canada in a single layer available in WMS and KML. The data is refreshed every 10 minutes and can be easily animated via the KML file. Here's the link to the WMS GetCapabilities and the KML file for Google Earth. For Esri users, here's the ArcGIS Online map with the layers. Interested in staying in touch with the improvements to GeoMet, join the announce mailing list. (Disclaimer: I am personally involved with GeoMet)

According to the WMS GetCapabilities, the weather radar mosaic is provided as 4 different layers:

• RADAR_RDBR: Rain mode reflectivity (dbz)
• RADAR_RDBS: Snow mode reflectivity (mm/hr)
• RADAR_RRAI: Rain precipitation (mm/hr)
• RADAR_RSNO: Snow precipitation (cm/hr)

From the documentation page: "Meteorological layers are dynamically served through the Web Map Service (WMS) standard to enable end-users to display meteorological data within their own tools and on interactive web maps, and served through KML standard for easy display in tools such as Google Earth™. [...] This service is aimed at specialized users and developers with good meteorological and information technology knowledge who want to visualize raw NWP models and the weather radar mosaic layers in common geospatial tools; want to integrate meteorological layers into their own platforms, or; want to display meteorological layers on interactive web maps for the web or on mobile devices."

Those interested in the U.S.-only weather radar layer in WMS and WCS described as "Mosaic of National Weather Services RADAR for CONUS 1x1 Km resolution" can head on this NOAA website. The following image provided by Environment Canada comes from the GeoMet services but that's not the weather radar mosaic layer.