Abstract
Homeland Security for urban areas requires up to date GIS information layers both for planning defensive options as well as responding rapidly to any disaster or attack which might occur. Past events have highlighted the fact that remotely sensed imagery provides a timely source of such information. However the tools for acquiring and processing such imagery have often been difficult to acquire and run. Different software packages were required for different stages of the process with all the integration and interoperability problems that ensue, thereby often requiring specialist staff to operate and delaying the time before useable products can be created. Instead Leica Geosystems provides an end to end, integrated image processing chain to meet these needs. A group responsible for Homeland Defense can acquire everything from the remote sensing platforms themselves (cameras, scanners, LIDAR, etc.) to the necessary software to extract valuable information from remotely sensed data in a tightly integrated software suite which provides data interoperability, Digital Terrain Model (DTM) generation and editing, stereo 3D vector feature extraction, image orthocorrection, mosaicing, 3D visualization and scenario modeling and cartographic map production. This paper will run through one example of the imaging chain being used to create a highly detailed 3D city model, complete with texture mapped buildings, from the raw input aerial photography. Such a model can then be used to model various Homeland Security problems such as sniper line of site, crowd control, escape routes and so on.