1. Future trends in imagery SSI ASIBA WALIS Imagery Workshop 28 th November 2005 Stuart Nixon, Founder

2. Scope Please refer to my SSC 2005 keynote for a discussion on imagery value This talk looks at requirements that are driving future trends

3. Working back from needs Most people don’t know what imagery can do for them because they can’t get access to imagery in the first place This makes it difficult to look at future trends and their impact So instead, look at future needs Working back from these needs will show us what future trends and changes are required

4. Needs – public use of imagery Public use and need is often overlooked Examples: Classified gravity maps of little use to unless you are planning to launch ICBM nuclear weapons Classified high resolution imagery are of little use to disaster victims Imagery locked up in government departments is of little public use Public use and availability is the key!

5. What we need for Public Use 5cm resolution over cities 25cm resolution everywhere else Repeated at least once per month Free use Easy distribution Easy online access These are minimum requirements

6. What will meet Public Use? Most demand will be met by airphotos First address the 80% need (high resolution and high repeat imagery)

7. Imagery public use requires a value chain of many stages… Acquisition Processing Storage Use enablement Web delivery Web serving Integration Thanks to AEROmetrex for this 3.5cm resolution imagery

8. Future trends on each stage Where are we today? What is missing? What future trends will help us?

9. Acquisition This is what we have today Solutions exist today for 5cm imagery that can be flown monthly Digital acquisition solves many problems Thanks to AEROmetrex for use of this 3.5cm resolution imagery

10. Processing A big challenge Today: 1TB/week We need: 1TB/hour Future trend will be towards grid computing solutions for geolocation, mosaicking, colour balancing and compression An area that deserves active R&D 12,000 airphotos (1TB): - Geocode - Reproject - Colourbalance - Mosaic - Compress

11. Processing trends We are choking on data volumes Grid computing the way to go (and a nice technical fit, too) Multi-core CPUs will help a lot A lot of software development needed A Government+Private “imagery grid computing” initiative would be interesting and very valuable

12. Storage 3TB per year is required to image an entire city 12 times a year at 5cm using 10:1 compression This is not a lot of storage This year a press release proudly announced Telstra’s NAS storage costs dropped to $100,000/TB from $1million/TB This is a joke

13. Storage trends 500GB drives today; 2TB drives soon Government agencies need to take a hard look at their IT storage approach Today $10K buys a 5TB RAID NAS capable box with grid computing ability Future approach to backup imagery is: Cheap delivery solutions (multi-location) Off-site hard disk replication

14. Use enablement Can I use my imagery in common applications? Use enablement pretty much solved (Google Earth, ECW, etc)

15. Use trends Mainstream (Google, Microsoft et al) going to drive new imagery use – a nasty shock to GIS vendors used to holding the whip GIS vendors will have to start paying more than lip service to open standards Would be nice if companies stopped inventing new image formats for each new satellite or imagery solution We must encourage initiatives like GDAL

16. Web delivery Peer to peer delivery proven to share TB’s of imagery to lots of users 35% of all Internet traffic today is peer to peer GeoTorrent.org demonstrates value Keep it simple!

17. Web serving Pretty much solved today Big challenges: Increasing integration Adding value (location based ads, etc) Availability of imagery

18. Integration trends Going to be driven by main stream Advertising revenue probably the main lead requirement New uses will open up we never thought of Our industry’s internal politics and squabbles largely irrelevant

19. Speculative musings Negative refractive optics – if possible – will allow sub-centimeter imagery Holographic storage in 2006 will offer 300GB DVD-style disks. Petabyte storage a real long term possibility Commercial cameras from Canon etc will offer 32+Mega pixel multi-visible spectral solutions at < $15,000/camera soon High resolution micro-satellite imagery in the future once digital airphotos show the way?

20. Conclusions Perhaps surprisingly, most of what we need is here today Other than for processing, few technical hurdles remain Big challenges are in other areas – licensing of imagery remains a problem Airphotos are going to be the driver