Evaluation of New Sensors for Emergency Management
7
3
EMERGE CAPABILITIES
Aircraft
Emerge Co. has a fleet of aircraft including a Cessna 172, a Piper Aztec, and
a Canberra B6. They have ten sensor systems throughout the United States that
are used to collect image data for commercial and governmental entities. Multi-
purpose information can be provided to end users about various characteristics of
the landscape such as agriculture, forestry, urban/rural land use, and utilities.
Nation-wide presence
Emerge also provides the potential to rapidly acquire imagery in any part of
the country following a disaster. They have the capability to mount an emergency
imagery response from flight plan to production of orthorectified image frames
within 24 to 30 hours from notification of a request for disaster acquisition.
Image sensors
The digital camera system records 12 bits per pixel per band, providing a
dynamic brightness range of 4096 levels. This allows a significant improvement
in image brightness contrast over that provided by 8-bit collection systems, such
as the mod-1 digital video systems. The improved contrast helps in the discrimi-
nation of bright objects against a bright background and the overall scene dyna-
mic range from darkest object visible to brightest. Imagery can be collected in
visual red, green, and blue (RGB) or red, green, and near-IR, called color infrared
(CIR).
System camera/IMU/GPS
The EMERGE system is compact, transportable, and easy to install in and
operate from small aircraft. A three-band Kodak DCS 460 digital camera with a
3072- by 2048-pixel readout is used to collect true-color images. A Litton LN200
strap-down inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a Novatel dual-frequency kine-
matic global positioning system (GPS) are used to collect the plane's position
and motion data. Data from the GPS give the plane and camera's coordinate
position as each frame is taken, and attitude data from the IMU permits projec-
tion of the center of each camera frame into ground coordinates when the data are
post-processed. The three-axis IMU records the plane's attitude (roll, pitch, and
yaw), enabling removal of distortion caused by the plane's not being level or not
Previous Page
