What Is Driving The Growing Demand For Satellite Imagery?
The increased number of imaging satellites along with the rapid maturation of GIS software and desktop tools are providing users with lots of options. "After more than five years of Ikonos operations, the GIS software is finally where we want it. Companies like PCI Geomatix with its Geomatica 9 solution, along with entire ARC suite have made impressive strides," says Klayman. "The next step involves a real-time adaptation of imagery via an Extranet. Right now, we are at near real-time."
"As more users realize the benefits and cost savings, they increasingly turn to the products that can improve efficiencies and make better planning and mapping decisions," says Herring. "The commercial satellite imaging industry has a history of targeting too many user markets at once. Providers must regularly take a hard look at market adoption rates and at how the products are being used, then focus on successfully serving those markets with relevant products."
Digitalglobe has been engaged in projects involving a mix of either higher-resolution aerial data or lower-resolution Landsat data with its Quickbird imagery. This growing emphasis on fused products is an important trend.
"For flight simulation, for example, you may have an entire region covered by 15-meter resolution imagery, but as you approach the airport and your elevation decreases, you need-higher resolution imagery; so Quickbird .6-meter resolution imagery of the airport and immediate area around the airport is fused into the product to give the detail necessary," says Herring who stresses the need for reliable customer service, quick processing and delivery, and partnerships with value-added companies.
Besides, ensuring that U.S. users have access to a full range of imagery available worldwide, Nelson sees a constant need for improved service and the delivery of easy to use image products. "The focus is becoming narrower, not broader. This is a good thing as it allows companies to focus on what serves that market best," says Nelson.
Nelson sees the fusing in real-time of satellite imagery with imagery generated by other remote platforms -- aircraft or UAV -- as a trend, but one that will be slow to develop, and driven mostly by users, rather than providers.
"Unfortunately, providers are slow to pick up on developing and providing solutions because the costs for doing this are so very high," Nelson says.
Asia, Middle East Increasing Their Imagery Play
Nelson was in China in late 2004 and reports that China is on the fast track when it comes to satellite imagery and remote sensing. "Chinese government agencies have invested in spot coverage of the entire country. Nobody in the world has such vast resources nor made a commitment to image use on the scale that we are now seeing in China. It far exceeds the activity of U.S. civilian agencies and it is very self-contained," says Nelson. "Asia in general is a big growth area and several countries are investing in spot receiving stations."
China declared that it intends to launch more than 100 Earth observation (EO) satellites before 2020. Sun Yanlai, director of China's National Space Administration, announced last November that China would launch a constellation of eight EO mini-satellites by 2010 for meteorological, resource and ocean observation purposes.
China and the Brazilian Institute for Space Research issued a joint announcement concerning a new EO satellite last October. Scheduled for launch in 2006, this will be the third EO satellite produced by this partnership, following those launched in 1999 and 2003. Expect more satellites in the future as China and Brazil expand and share their expertise in the role of satellite imagery in disaster response, urban planning and resource /forestry development, among other things.
Many other countries are moving ahead with respect to EO and satellite imagery-related projects, including India and Israel. Within India, for example, scientists have used satellite pictures to combat deforestation, monitor desertification, predict crop yields and trace the course of an underground river in northwest India that some scientists say could be used to irrigate the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. Satellites could also be used to assess how sedimentations reduce the storage capacity of reservoirs, affecting power generation.
While the market for global images and immense archives may be quite limited or finite, the scope of the future demand for medium- and high-resolution imagery data in real-time is still open to question. Regardless, the golden age of satellite imagery lies dead ahead, and when it come to creative new imagery software tools and solutions in general, the future is wide open.
Peter J. Brown is Via Satellite's Senior Multimedia & Homeland Security Editor. He also volunteers as a satellite technology and communications advisor to the Maine Emergency Management Agency.
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