Erdas, Infoterra Collaborate on TerraSAR-X Data Project

[Satellite TODAY 09-16-10] Erdas has partnered with Infoterra, a radar satellite data provider to develop operational applications for TerraSAR-X radar satellite imagery and strengthen the knowledge of SAR data analysis within the user community, the companies announced Sept. 15.
    Infoterra is the exclusive holder of commercial exploitation rights to TerraSAR-X data. The two companies said the partnership was formed to address the increasing use of radar imagery.
    “New sensors like TerraSAR-X offer high spatial resolution, excellent geometric accuracies, short revisit times and a variety of polarizations and imaging modes. At the same time, innovative techniques have been developed to extract and process information from radar data. Radar data is consequently making a rapid transition from research and development applications to solving real-world problems. Erdas and Infoterra plan to work together to rationalize this plethora of data into clearly defined application scenarios. A key component of this transition is dedicated software that enables the problem solver to extract the needed information from the imagery without deep domain knowledge,” Erdas said in a company statement.
    The companies said they would work to enable experts at intelligence and military agencies, state and local governments, civil organizations, crisis response organizations and non-governmental organizations to transform TerraSAR-X imagery into geo-information.
    The new agreement is effective immediately and includes the creation of dedicated training material for Erdas users. In addition, there will be joint evaluation of existing tools and potentials with regard to stereometric and interferometric data sets.