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October 2000
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IMAGINE OrthoBASE Supports CNN's `Real Time' Reporting
-The downside of Atlanta's booming job market increased traffic congestion, urban deforestation, and air pollution so bad that federal authorities have intervened-was the focus of CNN's DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA "Where We Live" segment, which aired October 1. IMAGINE OrthoBASE geographic imaging software from ERDAS, Inc. (Atlanta, GA) helped bring these "quality of life" issues home to viewers wherever they live.
ERDAS software is used by thousands of professional planners, scientists, businesses, and citizens group around the world to gather information from various types of geographic imagery, including the latest high-resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography. These images are often used in combination with other kinds of information (like the locations of new subdivisions or toxic waste sites) to show changes over time and help professional planners forecast future growth.
In preparing the hour-long "Where We Live" special, CNN's technical staff worked with researchers at the Center for GIS at Georgia Tech. The team obtained aerial photos of three Georgia counties captured in 1993 and again in 1999. The Georgia GIS Data Clearinghouse, a repository of statewide digital data, maintains the one-meter imagery. Using IMAGINE OrthoBASE, the Center's researchers orthocorrected the aerial photos, then used the latitude, longitude bearings taken by CNN's team with global positioning system (GPS) receivers to locate specific homes within the imagery. The orthocorrected data could be used with other maps and photographs to create time-lapse sequences for the TV special. The sequence ultimately used depicted the rapid urbanization of Cherokee County, a northwest Atlanta suburb.
IMAGINE OrthoBASE was used by the Georgia Center for GIS to orthocorrect aerial photos from 1993 and 1999, for change visualization of Cherokee County, Georgia (northwest of Atlanta), in support of CNN's television production of "Where We Live."
ERDAS geographic imaging technology, already the de facto geospatial tool used by researchers and scientists worldwide, has been used by the media to create 3D movies of current events, weather and disaster events, and as a backdrop to newspaper graphics in the past. "Imagery is a fast way to convey complicated bits of data, and make it easy to understand," explains Bruce Rado, Vice President of ERDAS. He notes that Georgia's statewide one-meter imagery is being used to balance growth in urbanized areas and preserve rural ones. "It's a case where science really does improve lives--for residents of Atlanta's suburbs and residents in remote parts of the state who want to preserve their quality of life as it is now."
More information is available at www.erdas.com.
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