I-cubed introduces affordable, high-resolution digital map product

I-cubed introduces affordable, high-resolution digital map product

Fort Collins, Colo - The USA Mosaic is composed of over 450 individual Landsat 7 satellite scenes mosaicked into a single image, but clients can purchase portions of the image map by the city, county, or other area of choice. Priced by the square mile, this off-the-shelf product costs as little as one-tenth that of custom satellite image maps.

i-cubed is making this digital image map available to the GIS market for use as an accurate and inexpensive basemap for their GIS and automated mapping applications. At 15-meter resolution, areas as small as a quarter-acre are clearly visible in the imagery.

"The potential applications are incredibly diverse," said Russ Cowart, President of i-cubed, "but the common theme is that the rich and accurate information content of the imagery allows the user to make better decisions more quickly."

The Instant Imagery" Series differs from other satellite image products because it gives the client freedom to choose an area of interest in any size or shape without worrying about satellite scene boundaries or having to order more data than needed. And the affordable price-point sets a new mark for cost-effectiveness.

"The real value of having a satellite image map for business applications is that it allows the user to look at the area and apply his or her intuition, experience and common sense to the business decision-making process," said Cowart.

The USA Mosaic can be ordered in any common GIS, desktop mapping or graphics program file format. Technical users can request any common map projection to ensure compatibility with existing geospatial data layers.

Development of the USA Mosaic was completed as a cooperative effort of i-cubed (information integration & imaging), and EarthWatch Inc., a high-resolution satellite image and spatial information provider in Longmont, Colo.

Project participants acquired and orthorectified Landsat 7 satellite scenes using rigorous photogrammetric techniques and i-cubed's eDEM terrain data. i-cubed then employed a proprietary fusion algorithm to synergistically capture the spatial information from the 15-meter panchromatic band with the spectral data contained in the natural- and false-color infrared bands.

The 450 Landsat scenes were then mosaicked, or digitally stitched together, color-balanced and incorporated into a database linked to the image delivery system.

"Although we have reached a milestone celebrating completion of the first generation of the USA Mosaic, we plan to update the product annually to ensure its continued value to commercial users," said Cowart. "In addition, we have already begun to generate value-added derivative products that will make our customers more productive."

i-cubed will be unveiling the derived products later this year, but the first is already in the works - the Hillshade 2-1/2D product. It combines terrain data from a shaded-relief DEM with the standard satellite imagery to create a unique image with three-dimensional qualities, which make it very easy to interpret.

Image samples and more information are available from i-cubed's web site at www.i3.com or by calling 1-800-4SATDAT.

For Instant Imagery" USA Mosaic image samples visit www.i3.com/products/samples.