During our recent travels to Singapore as exhibitors at the GSDI conference, the weather was characteristically warm and humid, and produced heavy cloud cover every hour of every day. No surprises there. However, towards the end of our stay, the city recorded the worst smog since 2003. This was the result of farmers burning off the harvested crops on neighboring Sumatra, mixed in with the warm humid air. The smog was so dense it was difficult see from one side of the street to the other. It occurred to me how difficult it would be to obtain standard geospatial imagery in these conditions; conditions which present no problem for GeoSAR. I also couldn’t help but notice the triple-canopy foliage everywhere that hid so many core infrastructure features. Why in this day of advanced remote sensing technology should a project be severely stalled due to dense vegetation or adverse weather or atmospheric conditions? Users need to be able to obtain accurate geospatial data – both imagery and 3D terrain data – through tropical triple canopy foliage in less than ideal weather conditions. These are a few of the mapping challenges that GeoSAR has successfully overcome.

Night or day, cloudy or clear, GeoSAR collects and delivers the core datasets required to populate your NSDI. Traditional sensors need sunlight for operation, which substantially limits flying time to daylight only and then only when the angle is right, and cloudy and stormy conditions can keep sensors grounded for days, or even weeks. Even panchromatic satellite imagery fails to collect during harsh atmospheric conditions, where clouds and smog hide the earth from these high orbits. Satellite data from radar sensors, while penetrating the clouds offer a much reduced resolution in comparison to GeoSAR; and let’s remember that resolution is an important factor when determining the overall geospatial needs of any NSDI programme.

Night time, bad weather, cloud cover, tree canopy, snow…all of these conditions translate to impossible mapping mission, however GeoSAR tackles these challenges and shows that mapping the impossible is not only possible, but can be done with unprecedented speed and accuracy, anytime, anywhere.

So, are you ready to utilize the world’s largest commercial airborne remote sensing platform? Drop us a line and let us know your needs and we’ll see if we have a solution that fits.