Industries: State and Federal Government
Australian Greenhouse Office
Vegetation Change Mapping
The Project
In order to meet the Australian Government’s commitment to achieving greenhouse gas emissions targets, the Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) established the National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS) for measuring CO2 released and sequestered across the Australian continent. The NCAS monitors changes in carbon tied up in woody vegetation; specifically, monitoring clearing and regeneration. This monitoring required accurate baseline data during the past 30 years.
The Solution
The NCAS used Landsat imagery to map and measure changes in woody vegetation cover in two-year time slices, during the period 1970 to 2002. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to accurately co-register, calibrate, and High-mosaic Landsat images for each time slice, across the whole continent. Software to assist the registration and calibrations was developed by the AGO in conjunction with CSIRO. Terranean developed its own in-house software and, in conjunction with the CSIRO software, implemented efficient quality controlled procedures to meet the exacting specifications of the AGO. Terranean processed all time slices for 12 of the 47 tiles that make up the Australian Continental mosaics.
The Result
Terranean was recognised as one of the major Remote Sensing companies in Australia and was awarded over 25% of the high quality work involved in this major Federal Government initiative.
Department of Lands NSW
Key Diagram Geo-referencing
What are Key Diagrams?
Key Diagrams are mapping indices that indicate the geographic location of aerial photography centres at the time of exposure. They contain information such as the date, film numbers, and frame numbers.
The Problem
Historically, Key Diagrams were kept on a different floor, in a cabinet not necessarily in order, and not necessarily in a cabinet. Departmental staff did not know what photography they had or what imagery was available at a given location. Some requests could take hours or even days to process.
The Solution
The Department of Lands needed key diagrams to be converted to electronic format and integrated into one effective index, which could be quickly accessed and reported on.
Terranean Mapping Technologies was commissioned to carry out this work.
As a first step, Terranean geo-referenced the 1974 key diagrams from NSW Department of Lands “standard coverage mapping program”, which indexed photography dating back to aerial surveys from 1948. This is pre AGD66 covering the whole of NSW.
LPI scanned into digital format and then supplied them to Terranean, where each sheet was referenced to GDA94 and supplied back as integrated geo-referenced GDA94 diagrams. Software was developed to automatically determine the projection and extents of each map from the name, which incorporated the mapsheet number and year of publication.
The Result
Departmental staff now can offer far greater levels of customer service, by using their desktops to quickly determine what aerial photos are available anywhere throughout NSW. Large areas of storage space are no longer required to keep old physical Key Diagrams Map Sheets. Also, staff now have the option of deploying the data over the Internet.
United States Census Bureau
Data Accuracy Improvement Project
The Challenge
The United States Census Bureau (USCB) is currently undertaking preparations for the upcoming 2010 US census. USCB workers will use handheld computers, instead of clipboards and pencils, to collect information from respondents. These handheld computers will have a map-based display and will be linked to Global Positioning System (GPS) to provide exact location information.
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An accurate base-mapping data set is required for the census. To achieve this, the USCB has implemented the Data Accuracy Improvement Project, which requires road, river, rail, and other geographic features in their digital data to be updated using supplied County spatial datasets.
The Solution
The USCB Data Accuracy Improvement Project provided an ideal opportunity for Terranean Mapping Technologies to develop an innovative solution to a problem, known as “conflation”, which had not been adequately solved anywhere else in the world. During a significant research and development phase, Terranean worked in conjunction with a business alliance partner in the US to develop a robust procedure for combining unrelated and disparate mapping layers to create very accurate integrated layers suitable for USCB systems.
Both off-the-shelf programs and a substantial amount of in-house software were used and developed to fine-tune the conflation process. In addition to software, detailed procedures and quality assurance methods were continually improved to ensure project success.
The Result
Terranean successfully resolved a major worldwide technical problem by successfully applying the process of conflation. Terranean then used the process to compile updates covering eleven County areas across the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Illinios, and Virginia. In each case, Terranean successfully met the USCB’s strict 99.8% accuracy specifications. The conflation process corrected over 136,000 data elements. USCB staff will use hand-held mapping computers, as pictured above, for collecting the 2010 census information. These systems use mapping data produced directly by Terranean, which was awarded the 2004 Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Award for Export for this project.