The GEO-Jobe Blog » Aerial Imagery

Nashville Flood

Eric Edmonds — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 22:31:36 +0000

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Recent infrared aerial photographs of the Nashville area flooding were taken by TN Department of Transportation. Generally TDOT charges for their imagery, however, according to a super secretive resource from TDOT’s GIS department, these photos may soon become available to state and local governments for free. How did we get this super secret information from our super secretive source? I’ll let you in on the secret… We emailed them…

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TDOT flew Monday, May 3rd – Saturday, May 7th over major flood areas. As you can imagine, some of the later photos taken Friday and Saturday did not capture the full flood epidemic. The good news is that we have the flight patterns. Hopefully some of you will be able to incorporate these photos into your GIS soon.

No wonder it took all week, they flew all over the place! Oh, and thanks for the screenshots Google Earth.

Google Earth Buildings just got Smarter!

Eric Edmonds — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:29:41 +0000

You can now find information about buildings in Google Earth’s 3-D view. Simply click on the building and you will find links, text, and pictures about the building.

2010 Winter Olympics Luge Aerial Images

Eric Edmonds — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:24:29 +0000

We thought you might be interested in a few different views of the luge track at Whistler Creekside. Check out more luge photos and the latest info at http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-luge/

Trimble Test Sites

Eric Edmonds — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:31:29 +0000

Before Trimble released the test results for their new postprocessing engine, they allowed us to see their three “test sites.” Trimble uses three, very different, testing sites to research receivers under two extreme environments and one “typical” environment. Each test site contains 26 carefully planned survey locati0ns offering different test and research results within each test area.

Test Site One is an ideal open environment with zero obsticles. The GPS antennas are mounted on stationary survey pillars. The test lab shows how performance is improved without other variables to consider. Because of its ideal environment, most receivers greatly exceed their specifications.

Test Site Two is a suburban industrial area down a two way street surrounded with one to two story buildings, parking, and street signage. Mature trees are scattered across one side of the street and are sparsely planted on the other. The 26 test locations are actual utility and city asset features including; telecom cable boxes, electrical transformers, fire hydrants, street lights, boundary begs, etc. Trimble uses Test Site Two to validate GPS receiver specifications because it most closely resembles the working environment of a “typical” user.

Test Site Three is a heavily forested environment with densely planted forestry. Trimble tests the performance and yield results of some of the most demanding conditions around. The tree canopy hardly allows sunlight to pass to the forest floor. Tests are conducted along the forest roads to provide “truth points.” Testing is also conducted within the forest to measure yield and accuracy.

Update to Microsoft Virtual Earth

Joel Smith — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:19:09 +0000

I heard from an ESRI representative that the subscription for the imagery and base maps from VE will cost $200/person/year. Incredibly affordable! One catch is that for now it will only be available as streaming information so you’ll have to be connected online to use it for now. They are working on a hosted solution, but no word on pricing for that just yet.

Microsoft Virtual Earth coming to ArcGIS 9.3

Joel Smith — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:19:26 +0000

Coming soon to ArcGIS 9.3 as a subscription based service that will allow you to add the Microsoft Virtual Earth imagery and base maps. The real benefit of using this service is that it removes the responsibility of finding and sometimes purchasing the latest base mapping files. Also, it frees you to map beyond your normal “home territory”, expanding your mapping abilities. No word yet on pricing, stay tuned! For now, investigate the beta program ESRI already offers for free as a GIS Server layer (http:/services.arcgisonline.com/v92) for imagery, topos, shaded relief maps, etc. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Google follows suite if not just to show up Microsoft

EarthNow! Landsat Image Viewer

Joel Smith — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:07:34 +0000

USGS has a new trick up its sleeve. Almost realtime satellite imagery from LandSat 5 & 7! Landsat 5 was launched in 1984 as a backup for Landsat 4 and scans the earth once every 16 days. Landsat 7 was launched in 1999 and circles the Earth at an altitude of 438 miles. These two satellites stream imagery continuously to the earth, specifically to the USGS where that data is compiled and analyzed and then hosted for public view on the EarthNow! site: http://earthnow.usgs.gov/ There you can view the latest pass of either Landsat 5 or 7 with a countdown till the next pass over the US. Each pixel of the images displayed is about 250 square meters, so I would worry about your personal privacy just yet (not to say other government agencies aren’t watching…don don don).

You can also link to http://glovis.usgs.gov from the EarthNow! page where you can download 20% or less cloud cover images of the US.

Successful Launch for Kentucky Space Balloon-1

Neill Jobe — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:46:23 +0000

Yesterday, Kentucky Space successfully launched a space balloon, nearly into space, in Bowling Green, KY. The balloon brought back amazing pictures of the earth’s surface that look very similar to something you would see from a space shuttle. Congratulations to the Kentucky Space team for this accomplishment. Pictures of the Launch can be seen by Clicking here . Click here for the Balloon’s eye view from space.

from the Herald Leader by Michael White
Reaching 91,277 feet, above 99 percent of the atmosphere, the balloon’s cameras were able to capture the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space, similar to the view from space shuttles.

From the Kentucky Space Website:
Kentucky Space is a non-profit enterprise involving a consortium of universities and private organizations for the purpose of pursuing space related education, R&D, small satellite design and launch operations.

Tour de France gets Google Street View

Eric Edmonds — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:07:34 +0000

The Tour de France is on and so is street view for the course. This year you can see the course using Google’s Street View technology. This LINK connects you to the traditional Google Maps site showing where street view is available over the course. The tour website is HERE. And a course map PDF is found HERE. I’m not sure if the street view camera actually picks up the bikers when they are shooting up on steroids, but its worth a look.

Info from the Google Earth Blog.

State of TN Now Offering Statewide Imagery for Purchase or Download

Neill Jobe — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:47:13 +0000

The State of TN Office for Information Resources (OIR), GIS Services Division are now making statewide imagery available for purchase or download. Anyone can now purchase the raw .TIF digital orthophotos and digital terrain models (DTMs) developed from the Tennessee Basemapping Program on a per sheet basis. More details about the nature, format and cost of the data can be found here. You can download the order form here.

Anyone can also now download, freely, the digital orthophotos from the Tennessee Basemapping program as well as the 2007 National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery in the MrSID file format on a per-county basis from the Tennessee Spatial Data Server.

Links Straight to the Data:
Click here for the Tennessee Basemap Orthophotos.
Click here for the NAIP imagery.