End of first phase of the InSAR cartography project of Venezuela (CARTOSUR II)

<a href=www.directionsmag.com>Company: Orbisat Remote Sensing May 13, 2003

The Airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar system (InSAR), OrbiSAR-1 of Orbisat da Amazônia, integrated in an aircraft Turbo Aerocommander has successfully terminated the aerial survey of the States of Bolivar and Delta Amacuro in Venezuela (263 000 sqkm) in the beginning of April 2003. The operational flight survey started in January 2003, overcoming all logistic problems during this time period and successfully produced a huge dataset of superb RADAR raw data. The simultaneous acquisition of two RADAR bands (X- and P-band) allows the production of 518 high quality Ortho-SAR-Maps in a scale of 1:50 000, including contour lines and various land cover elements such as forest types, water bodies and streams, roads, building density, roads, land use etc.

The collected data is now being processed in a processing center, which has been established especially for this project in the Centro Profesional del Este in Caracas. About twelve Venezuelans, who have been specifically trained by Orbisat da Amazônia, work on the required data processing in three shifts for 24 hours a day. They are supported by representatives of Infoterra from Germany and Orbisat, Brazil.

The InSAR processing software, developed by Orbisat da Amazônia S/A is generating each day Ortho-SAR-Images and the respective digital ground and surface models, to allow a production of several value added cartographic maps per day, which is performed by additionally developed software through Infoterra and Orbisat. It is now the daily task of the purchaser of this project, the Geographical Institute of Venezuela Simon Bolívar (IGVSB), to control and catalogue the 518 maps in their database, which are being produced in the scale of 1:50.000.

Orbisat da Amazônia S/A is already preparing its equipment for the next national and international projects, which will require higher resolution and height precision than requested within the Venezuelan project. The updated OrbiSAR-1 system will therefore offer a spatial resolution of up to 50 cm and a vertical accuracy of up to 30 cm in a full operational mapping mode.

This unique Brazilian InSAR mapping system was developed and manufactured in Campinas, Manaus and Sao José dos Campos Brazil, by the kind support of Softex and BNDES (Brazilian Development Bank). By today, BNDES extend their support towards the financing of the exportation of the products generated by OrbiSAR-1.