Example Opportunities

Agriculture and Forestry

Traditionally, satellite images have proven useful to agriculture and forestry in a varity of ways. Examples include large-area crop identification, crop disease characterization, and resource management. The accuracies of the new satellite systems will greatly enhance the current trends in prescription agriculture and crop monitoring. In particular with prescription agriculture, the ability to precisely apply fertilizer, pesticide, and water every few feet in response to changing field condition requirements. High-resolution timely imagery provides an essential component.

Utilities Management

Infrastructure is often subject to changes that are difficult to document in a rapidly changing or politically closed environment. The new satellite systems will greatly increase the ability to identify roads, bridges, railroads, power lines, dams, growth of cities, lines of communications, and other important features. Example of how this new information can be used include:

  • Right-of-Way Management
  • Infrastructure Planning
  • Land-base Mapping

Emergency Response

The new satellite systems can offer timely and precise images to support emergency response. The figures at ten-meter, three-meter, and one-meter GSD, respectively, shows an image of Kobe, Japan taken just after the January 1995 earthquake. In the one-meter image, important features (e.g., damage to the freeway) are clearly visible. Radar systems can also significantly increase the capability to respond to emergencies. As an active system, it provides both night and day images under any weather condition. This figure shows how ERS-1 captured the extent of flooding in the St. Lewis, Mississippi area in 1993.

Urban Planning

The high-spatial resolution of these new satellite systems holds great promise for aiding in urban planning. For example, the number of vehicles on a road system can be characterized; thus, this information can be used for planning new additions to the road system. Changes are not only identified, but with increased resolution the causes of the change can be understood. Examples of new urban applications for the high-resolution satellite data, both spatial and DEM, include:

  • Long-Term Comprehensive Planning
  • Developed and Undeveloped Parcels
  • Urban Planning
  • Tax Map Updates
  • Landbase Mapping and
  • the design of cellular telephone coverage areas.

Treaty Support

The new satellite systems can directly support treaty activities. For example, Open Skies is able to provide high-resolution optical and radar data sets; however, significant constraints (temporal, spacial, bureaucratic, and technological) exist by the use of this system. Images from the new satellite systems can be used to minimize these constraints by

  • using satellite images in place of an Open Skies mission
  • providing valuable auxiliary information to optimize the interpretation of Open Skies data sets
  • optimizing the selection of limited Open Skies missions.

These new satellite systems can also provide up-to-date maps to field verification teams who are working in unfamiliar territory.

Characterizing Military Activities

The military can exploit many of the same capabilities that are exploited by the civilian establishment, although the military's applications are somewhat different. For instance, the military may not use DEM for ground water modeling, but they will use it extensively for line-of-sight calculations. In addition, up-to-date infrastructure information will be used for logistics and planning, and change detection will be used for battle damage assessment. The military also has very complex and specialized GIS models that can particularly exploit images and maps. Another important consideration is that potential adversaries will also have access to near NTM capabilities.

Television News and Communications

The speed and accuracy of the new systems will both free reporters from relying on government-provided information during international crises and it will free viewers from relying solely on what reporters tell them. When combined with other trends (e.g., increased CPU power and software) the new images provide at new view of complex situations. For example, the new satellite images can be used to simulate flyover of troop encampments in Bosnia.

Environmental Protection

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has used high-resolution images to help identify and characterize hazardous-waste sites and sources of pollution. The new satellite systems promise of cost-effective and timely data should promote the increased use of high-resolution imagery to help solve environmental problems. The systems can also provide early warning of environmental hazards. For example, by characterizing potential fuel (.e.g., wood-shake roofs, dryness of vegetation around homes) it will be much easier to plan firebreaks and other preventive measures to control wildfires like those that sweep through urban areas, such as Los Angeles and Oakland, California.

Law Enforcement

While commercial satellites cannot produce images of people, they can show such things such as cars parked in driveways and structural changes to homes in a timely manner without giving clues about their presences. For police this means new investitive tools. For instance, police monitoring a suspected crack house will be able to see the pattern of vehicles arriving and leaving. Local governments can use the images to update tax assessments and spot additions to buildings that are in violation of building codes.