ANALYSIS OF RADAR AND OPTICAL SPACE BORNE DATA FOR LARGE SCALE TOPOGRAPHICAL MAPPING

Abstract. Normally, in order to provide high resolution 3 Dimension (3D) geospatial data, large scale topographical mapping needs input from conventional airborne campaigns which are in Indonesia bureaucratically complicated especially during legal administration procedures i.e. security clearance from military/defense ministry. This often causes additional time delays besides technical constraints such as weather and limited aircraft availability for airborne campaigns. Of course the geospatial data quality is an important issue for many applications. The increasing demand of geospatial data nowadays consequently requires high resolution datasets as well as a sufficient level of accuracy. Therefore an integration of different technologies is required in many cases to gain the expected result especially in the context of disaster preparedness and emergency response. Another important issue in this context is the fast delivery of relevant data which is expressed by the term “Rapid Mapping”.

In this paper we present first results of an on-going research to integrate different data sources like space borne radar and optical platforms. Initially the orthorectification of Very High Resolution Satellite (VHRS) imagery i.e. SPOT-6 has been done as a continuous process to the DEM generation using TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X data. The role of Ground Control Points (GCPs) from GNSS surveys is mandatory in order to fulfil geometrical accuracy. In addition, this research aims on providing suitable processing algorithm of space borne data for large scale topographical mapping as described in section 3.2.

Recently, radar space borne data has been used for the medium scale topographical mapping e.g. for 1:50.000 map scale in Indonesian territories. The goal of this on-going research is to increase the accuracy of remote sensing data by different activities, e.g. the integration of different data sources (optical and radar) or the usage of the GCPs in both, the optical and the radar satellite data processing. Finally this results will be used in the future as a reference for further geospatial data acquisitions to support topographical mapping in even larger scales up to the 1:10.000 map scale.