Hi-tech aerial mapping first

New Perth company Digital Mapping Australia Pty Ltd, the first Australian company to offer full digital aerial mapping, has established its head office in East Perth and signed up its first project, all in the same week.

Another office and processing centre is planned for Brisbane later this month.

Established by Bruce Mason and Dr Holger Eichsteadt, both with many years of international aerial mapping and photographic experience, DiMAP will operate two new Vexcel UltraCam D large format digital aerial cameras, one on each coast.

In Perth, the company has access to a Rockwell 690 Turbo Aerocommander.

Mr Mason says these state-of-the-art cameras are poised to replace those that use film for image-based aerial survey.

Each camera has seven different sensors, each capturing different components of an image, then assimilating them into one image in milliseconds.

The rapid-fire cameras are light (65 kilograms), can be installed in two hours with images provided with 12 hours, and are low cost, as there is no film processing or scanning.

The images are in four bands – red, green, blue and Infrared, and panchromatic.

Mr Mason says the resolution of UltraCam D images is better than film, because of the 14-bit range of pixel data and the fact that high-resolution film scans pick up the film emulsion grain, which introduces random noise to the image.

DiMAP is targeting the mining, government, local government, environment, forestry and land development sectors, its first contract having been secured recently with a company in the Goldfields.