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Geoinformatics_03-2009
interview prise, web-based, mobile and desktop clients. for over 30 years, erdas has been an industry leader in image exploitation, processing, visualization and geospatial data management. with open geospatial consortium (ogc) and international organization for standardization (iso) interoperability, erdas develops standards-based solutions with the most advanced service-oriented platform available. building on the company's rich history and expertise in geospatial imaging, erdas is now a leader in the broader geospatial information market. jt: the erdas philosophy of transforming data into geospatial information is structured in four essential steps author, manage, connect and deliver. please, explain in detail the meaning and the contents of these four steps. jd the four steps are based upon the underlying premise that the earth s geography is continuing to change at a rapid pace. as a result, there is an increasing need for geographic information to understand the earth. this spark fuels the lifecycle of geographic information. the lifecycle is broken down into four primary components: author, manage, connect and deliver. as the earth changes, we have an increasing need to sense the earth. data can be captured from a variety of sensors, including airborne, satellite and terrestrial. as the raw data is captured, it needs to be authored in a form that is useable to derive information. as the volume of data increases, organizations experience a data management problem. enterprise solutions are needed to manage the large volumes of data that have been sensed. once the data has been centrally managed, there is often a need to share that information with others distributed across an organization. delivering all this information to end users is the final step. with an increasing need to understand our dynamic world, this is an ongoing, recurring lifecycle. our thirst for understanding the earth ultimately provides us with more knowledge. this knowledge enables us to take necessary precautions to protect our planet and ensure a viable future. each of the components of the lifecycle and our product portfolio are explained in more detail below: author transform source data into products, including orthos, 3d data, land cover data and processing models. erdas offers a full suite of authoring products including erdas imagine, erdas er mapper, lps and extensions for arcgis. manage by centrally managing authored or latest news? visit www.geoinformatics.com purchased data, the data is organized for quick and efficient discovery. with erdas solutions, users can easily manage their information, including finding, describing, cataloging and serving data and web services. products include erdas aplollo and erdas ade. connect organizations need to connect their users to share data. erdas titan securely connects users to rapidly share content throughout an organization or business-to-business. deliver after data has been provisioned, users need to be able to deliver the data customers need, the way they want it and when they need it. erdas provides the industry leading solution for quickly delivering large amounts of imagery that can be easily integrated into cad, gis, mobile, web and desktop geospatial or business applications. erdas image web server efficiently distributes massive amounts of geospatial imagery to thousands of users, all on a single server. solving the infrastructure congestion problems traditionally associated with deploying large amounts of image data, users quickly access the information they need. lidar systems now have a medium-format digital camera fully integrated. with respect to airborne digital imaging, we have seen improvements in maximizing area coverage so that less flight lines have to be flown to cover more area. line staggering with pushbroom sensors enables high-resolution acquisition of up to 24,000 pixels across swath, increasing productivity up to 50%. this allows faster flying times, acquiring more data for photogrammetric and remote sensing applications. the leica ads80 can capture 2,000 megapixels per square scene. increasingly, airborne data is being used for thematic interpretation and classification as well, replacing some satellite data. sensors that acquire data without requiring pan sharpening during post-processing and provide good radiometric calibration deliver superior performance in feature extraction and classification. increasing the amount of data acquired during a mission requires processing techniques that provide fast post-processing without the loss of accuracy. we believe workflows that deliver high accuracy at the "speed of flight" (with minimum interaction) will become more important, particularly as we collect more data. after the data is captured, erdas provides workflow driven solutions for authoring the data. erdas has products such as lps and orima to produce the data as it comes out of the sensors, including block triangulation, automatic point matching, automated terrain extraction and ortho-mosaic production. erdas imaine is also used to extract derivative information products from this data, thereby increasing the overall return on investment while maximizing the depth of information contained within the source data. erdas also has software to centrally catalog and manage the data, as well as high-speed internet delivery solutions for rapidly incorporating the data into business applications. erdas seamlessly transitions that data from the sensors into a variety of applications for authoring, managing, connecting and delivering geospatial information. jt: in your opinion, which are the major recent improvements in the methods of sensor data acquisition, quality analysis of the acquired data, combined use of various sensor data and data modeling? how can erdas technologies be helpful in these processes? jd with respect to lidar data acquisition, there have been major improvements in point density and accuracy. since its introduction, lidar systems have drastically increased in accuracy. both accuracy and point density must increase together to avoid "fuzzy looking" data with details masked by "noise. today's lidar systems deliver 40 times as many data points per square meter of terrain as systems did ten years ago, capturing finer features in the terrain. leica incorporates various technologies in its product. system accuracy has improved from tenths of meters in the late 1990s to three to five centimeters today. quality analysis has also progressed, and there are now a significant number of accepted practices used to analyze the accuracy of lidar data, even over very large project areas. in many cases, the techniques borrow from conventional technologies, adapting to meet the strengths inherent in the lidar capture method. you can now also combine various data acquisition technologies. we have a number of customers flying large-format imaging systems concurrently with lidar. in addition, 50% of all leica lidar jt: how do geospatial disciplines and domains relate to open geospatial consortium (ogc) web services and which are the benefits from ogc interoperability? which steps is erdas making in implementing ogc compliance? how are the tasks of various data conversions implemented in erdas technologies? how ogc strategic membership benefits erdas customers? april/may 2009 15
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