International Arcliives of Photogrammetiy and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII Part 7C2. UNISPACE III, Vienna. 1999
140
UNISPACE 111- 1SPRS/NASA Seminar on
“Environment and Remote Sensing for Sustainable Development"
9:00 am -12:00 pm, 23 July 1999, VIC Room A
Vienna, Austria
With the recognition that national and commercial systems
will co-advance it is critical to understand the nature of tliis
emerging digital Earth information industry better. Figure 5
shows and describes the key elements involved in the
“System”. Starting with the Earth, which is sensed passing
or actively, data is digitally transmitted to the ground where it
is high speed processed, stored, transmitted, fused, value
added processed (VAP’ed), and finally sent to the end user.
Along the pyramidal process is an ever expanding network
ultimately reaching the millions, eventually, billions of
consumers. The aggregate global remote sensing, mapping,
data conversion, value added processing, and commercial
software industry is today several billion dollars and is
growing annually 20 - 30 % due to the advancement in the
information age.
Figure 5: NOTIONAL EARTH INFORMATION SYSTEM
V' ; . 7
0 Few Suppliers
on order of 10-20
0 Wideband Communication
at 100's Mbps to Gbps rates
(X - Band -W Ka - band)
0 10 - 100’S Terabyte
Digital Mass Storage
Systems
0 High Performance
Pixel Processing
Work Stations
0 Scanners and
File Converters
13 User Unique
Collateral Data
Digitai
Information
Fusion,
Layering
Passive
Active
Sensor
Platform
I
iUr
0 National
1 Civil
0 Commercial
- Reconnaissance
- Scientific
- Economic
Space To Ground
Communication
Mass
Storage
Data Processing &
Content Creation
I
Value Added
Processing (VAP)
Data
Conversion
Collateral
Data Base
User
^■Applications &
Analytic Tools
End Users
-Information Manufacturing
-Super High speed Pixel Processing
-Giga Bit Local Area Networks
-Very large disk storage on-line
-Commercial off the Shelf Software
Providers - Hundreds
-Application Unique Tools -
Thousand
Developed for Vertical Markets
i Millions
