Terrain Imaging Takes
Flight
Imagery data and flight simulation capabilities drive
ImageLinks' success
by Anne Straub
Brevard Technical Journal
|
The F-15 pilot heads south over Iraqi mountain ranges, heading toward Baghdad. He locates the river that will guide him and passes familiar landmarks on the way to the airport, whose layout he knows intimately.
The catch: The pilot hasn't been deployed to the Middle East yet. He's using a flight simulator that trains him on the exact terrain he can expect in the field.
The hypothetical scenario is made possible in part by ImageLinks, a Melbourne company that provides data based on imagery from satellites or aerial cameras. ImageLinks takes imagery and transforms it into useable data for a variety of customers.
When the company was spun off from Melbourne-based Harris Corp. in April 1996, the business plan was to market to commercial customers. The theory was that the emergence of privately owned high-resolution satellites would lead to a growing demand for image processing among commercial companies.
Instead, about 80 percent of ImageLinks' work originates with the federal government. Most of that is in visualization and simulation for various aircraft. ImageLinks is busy producing imagery of one country after another, the company says. "We're sitting on a large backlog of jobs," said Joanne Spix, ImageLinks marketing and sales support manager.
The privately held company does not release financial data. According to Spix, revenues have tripled over the past five years and the company forecasts an annual 40 percent growth rate for the next five years. ImageLinks employs 33 people.
Helping to drive its growth is ImageLink's model-based processing approach. The company has developed mathematical models of sensors to identify the location of individual pixels in an image. That method produces much better data, and does it much faster, than manual approaches to correcting distortions, said Fay Brown, chief financial officer for the company.
The technology also helps the company maintain accuracy when dealing with multiple images, such as when merging low-resolution color data with high-resolution black and white. Its ability to fuse images is another area where the company distinguishes itself, Brown said.
ImageLinks technology will let simulator maker CAE Inc. of Montreal, Canada, put satellite imagery on top of terrain for a more realistic and accurate product, said Jean-Claude Vienneau, marketing manager for visual systems. Earlier this year, the company contracted with ImageLinks to be one of CAE's major data providers.
"We have not seen the same technologies at other companies. They massage it to the next level," Vienneau said. CAE creates visual databases for military and civil pilot training.
While such applications provide the bulk of ImageLinks' business, its data is used for a variety of purposes. Ducks Unlimited, a wetlands conservation organization, uses ImageLinks data to monitor wetland restoration projects. The group has found that images from Landsat offer better information than more traditional aerial observation when determining how much water is on the ground.
ImageLinks excels at providing spatial accuracy so that researchers can identify exactly where their projects are on the landscape, said Dawn Browne, a Ducks Unlimited remote sensing and global information systems analyst.
In one Ducks Unlimited project, researchers created a soil moisture index based on satellite imagery of the Lower Mississippi Valley, provided by ImageLinks. Tennessee wildlife officials tested the index and found it accurately delineated wet soils in West Tennessee. Conservationists there now can use the tool to target areas best suited for restoration of shallow wetland habitat for shorebirds and other wildlife.
Ducks Unlimited also uses the information for change detection. The organization studies historical data to see how wetlands have changed over time, monitor forest loss and locate reforestation efforts in areas that used to be covered with trees.
The group is working with the federal government on a Department of Agriculture Forest Service project to restore Mississippi Delta land that had been cleared for agricultural use. Using Landsat imagery, researchers identified the areas most recently cleared. Those areas were wet enough to escape clearing for many decades, only recently becoming candidates for conversion to agriculture. The areas are prime candidates for reforestation and wetland restoration.
Maps lining the walls at ImageLinks' Melbourne location illustrate uses of the technology that the company promotes as more efficient than traditional, labor-intensive methods of obtaining information. For example, a certain color showing up in a view of Chile reveals the location of a high concentration of copper-bearing ore, without the expense of sending people into the field. On a change-detection map, varying colors show parts of another landscape that have been deforested over time.
"You would know to a gnat's eyelash how many acres of trees were cut and you never had to leave your desk - and it cost you $5,000," Brown said.
ImageLinks work has been used by the agricultural arm of the Senegal government to monitor changes in its land, and by insurance companies to map fire hazard potential in California.
Still another use: making models of the earth. "You can take an action and see what would happen without even doing it," Brown said.
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