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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B4, 2012 
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia 
AUTOMATING MAPPING PRODUCTION FOR THE ENTERPRISE: 
FROM CONTRACT TO DELIVERY 
R. Uebbing, C. Xie, B. Beshah, J. Welter 
North West Geomatics Ltd., Suite 212, 5438 - 11" Street NE, Calgary, Alberta, T2E 7E9, Canada — 
{robert.uebbing | chenglin.xie | belai.beshah | john.welter} @nwgeo.com 
Commission IV, WG IV/5 
KEY WORDS: Processing, Monitoring, Automation, Decision Support, Metadata, Spatial Infrastructures 
ABSTRACT: 
The ever increasing volume and quality of geospatial data has created new challenges for mapping companies. Due to increased image 
resolution, fusion of different data sources and more frequent data update requirements, mapping production is forced to streamline the 
work flow to meet client deadlines. But the data volume alone is not the only barrier for an efficient production work flow. Processing 
geospatial information traditionally uses domain and vendor specific applications that do not interface with each other, often leading to 
data duplication and therefore creating sources for error. Also, it creates isolation between different departments within a mapping 
company resulting in additional communication barriers. 
North West Geomatics has designed and implemented a data centric enterprise solution for the flight acquisition and production work 
flow to combat the above challenges. A central data repository containing not only geospatial data in the strictest sense such as images, 
vector layers and 3D point clouds, but also other information such as product specifications, client requirements, flight acquisition data, 
production resource usage and much more has been deployed at the company. As there is only one instance of the database shared 
throughout the whole organization it allows all employees, given they have been granted the appropriate permission, to view the current 
status of any project with a graphical and table based interface through its life cycle from sales, through flight acquisition, production and 
product delivery. Not only can users track progress and status of various work flow steps, but the system also allows users and 
applications to actively schedule or start specific production steps such as data ingestion and triangulation with many other steps (ortho- 
rectification, mosaicing, accounting, etc.) in the planning stages. While the complete system is exposed to the users through a web 
interface and therefore allowing outside customers to also view their data, much of the design and development was focused on work flow 
automation, scalability and security. Ideally, users will interact with the system to retrieve a specific project status and summaries while 
the work flow processes are triggered automatically by modeling their dependencies. The enterprise system is built using open source 
technologies (PostGIS, Hibernate, OpenLayers, GWT and others) and adheres to OGC web services for data delivery (WMS/WFS/WCS) 
to third party applications. 
INTRODUCTION production NWG also provides an online image distribution 
service through VALTUS Imagery Services. Until recently, these 
In recent years the management of geospatial data, imagery and two parts of the company have been treated as separate entities. 
point clouds, has become increasingly challenging for mapping Given the nature of the content (spatially referenced imagery) a 
companies due to higher resolution sensor technologies, new central repository containing imagery and metadata provides an 
methods in data processing (GEHRKE et al, 2011), higher demand efficient and seamless integration between production and 
for faster delivery, but also the use of different software packages delivery. 
by various vendors. The inhomogeneous environment requires 
frequent re-formatting and import/export of data along the But an enterprise catalogue goes beyond solving the technological 
processing chain during the life cycle of the information from gaps between the two parts of the company. By assigning resource 
acquisition through to deliverable products. load, budgeting information, quality control results to projects that 
act as containers for image data, it also make the catalogue an 
In addition to the complexity of the data processing of the actual invaluable tool for planning, accounting and decision making. 
Sensor data, the role of communication between departments 
Within a mapping company plays a crucial role, more so due to the By adding different completion states for images and projects 
Tien expectations of clients for faster turnaround times. during the production phase, stakeholders can monitor production 
progress. This information can also be utilized to automate work 
North West Geomatics (NWG), a mapping company located in flow steps and further increase overall efficiency in production by 
Calgary, Canada, owns multiple ADS pushbroom sensors and one reducing the amount of manual and interactive processing steps 
ALS LiDAR sensor. In addition to being a traditional mapping such as starting jobs for ortho production. In turn, this frees up 
Company with orthophoto and digital elevation model (DEM) 
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