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Aerial remote sensing sensor

The high resolution of Orthophoto aerial images enables the segmentation of landscapes in ecotopes.

Technology

Orthophoto consists of a mosaic of orthorectified aerial images at a resolution of 10 to 80 cm. Images should be available at an annual basis starting in 2005 and archived data include 2006, 2010 and 2012. The initial goal of this data was to serve as the basis for controls of the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Images are taken by a digital large format frame camera, the UltraCamXp and the UltraCamX depending of the year​. These cameras have a state-of-the-art optical system with 100 mm focal length for the panchromatic camera heads and 33 mm for the multi spectral camera heads. The UltraCamX has four camera heads for the Panchromatic Channel giving an image size of 14430*9420 pixels, and four cameras heads for the Multispectral Channel (red, green, blue and near infra-red) giving an image size of 4992*3328 pixels. The main improvements of the UltraCamXp are the increase footprint of 196 Mega pixels (134 Mega pixels for the UltraCamX) and the in-flight exchangeable storage system, 6600 images now (4700 UltraCamX).

The very high resolution of the images is very useful to segment the landscape in homogeneous area of land cover (the ecotopes); moreover the four spectral bands are exploited during the classification process.

The UltraCamX (Courtesy of Microsoft UltraCam Business Unit)