Automatic Generation of Remote Sensing Image Mosaics for Mapping Large Natural Hazards Areas

Abstract

Remotely sensed data, ranging from satellite imagery, airborne laser scanner data, and aerial photograph, play more and more important roles in environmental monitoring, emergency response, and disaster assessment. Among the products of the broad range of applications, raster base maps, which are generated from various sources of remote sensing data, are becoming very critical for effective and efficient disaster management. The raster base maps can provide detailed topographic, land-use and land-cover information on the earth’s surface in a short period or near real time. With the growing requirements of such raster base maps, the techniques which can be used for automatically correcting raw data and generating digital maps are urgently required.

This paper presents a system that consists of a set of processing steps to georeference and merge many satellite or aerial images together in order to quickly map a large geographic region. The periodic processing results can be compared and analyzed for monitoring a large emergency area. The technique makes full use of georeference and sensor model information, such as ephemeris data, geometric model, and/or GPS/INS navigation and positioning information, to automatically register and orthorectify the raw image data. Through mosaicking process, a seamless mosaicking image or image tiles is produced, which will be in a selected map projection system with consistent spatial resolution. Additionally, semi-automatic and manual editing can be performed to produce a standard map to satisfy the requirements of mapping agencies.