INS: Digital landscape images on the Internet.

M2 PRESSWIRE-4 February 1999-INS: Digital landscape images on the Internet (C)1994-99 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

RDATE:030299

Detail-rich satellite images of landscapes and road networks will now be available quicker on the Internet, thanks to a new service called GISimages from the "Online Web Shop" of Swedish company SSC Satellitbild. All satellite images are ortho-corrected and can be used directly with geometrical reliability in a GIS (Geographic Information System).

"This service gives up-to-date information about the status of the landscape and any changes in it. This is especially valuable in agriculture and forestry, in road network planning and in local and regional outline planning", says Per Zeidlitz at SSC Satellitbild in Sweden. The new web service (http://www.ssc.se/sb.webshop1.htm) means that the images, which have a resolution of 20 metres, can be made available quicker and cheaper than before. "Images arrive on CD-ROM a few days after ordering", says Per Zeidlitz.

Users of GISimages can choose between purchasing entire satellite images (EasyScene) or extracts in the form of map sheets divided up on the basis of the national cartographic system (EasyMap). All images can be previewed in low-resolution format directly on the screen. There is also a choice of different levels of processing for colour reproduction and contrast range. All satellite images are ortho-corrected using the 50-metre-grid terrain model of the National Swedish Land Survey Agency (Lantm teriverket). This is to eliminate eventually parallax errors in image data. As a result, images from GISimages can be used directly and with geometrical reliability in a GIS (Geographic Information System).

"At present, the system only contains images of Sweden, but our aim is to build up an image bank of easily accessible images from different parts of the world," says Per Zeidlitz. SSC Satellitbild, which was started in 1982, is a subsidiary company of the Swedish Space Corporation. The company operates worldwide and is among the leaders in the field of remote-sensing-based GIS. Its customers include international organisations such as the World Bank, cartographic institutions in various countries and companies all over the world.

CONTACT: Per Zeidlitz/Jorgen Hartnor, SSC Satellitbild, Tel: +46 980 67100 Tel: +46 980 16044 e-mail: pzz@ssc.se e-mail: jorgen.hartnor@ssc.se

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