AAM

RapidEye Imagery: Enhanced Accuracy over Australia

Australian Users of RapidEye products now benefit from enhanced positional accuracy of RapidEye products on a national basis.

The recent adoption of a higher definition terrain model and enhanced control datasets has precipitated this significant benefit. Client feedback has been positive this year as the applications of 5m RapidEye have expanded across our region.

Tim Neale, Director of Precision Agriculture, finds the combination of RapidEye's spectral bands and enhanced positional accuracy to his advantage when working on agricultural projects on both the east and west coasts of Australia. “The ability of RapidEye to capture large areas quickly gives an advantage in cloudy areas especially where we are looking to make quick decisions in the field.”

Contact us for more information about case studies using RapidEye data or to request speculative data capture utilising the full constellation of 5 identical RapidEye satellites which deliver 5m ortho corrected products with 5 spectral bands.

Above: Tim Neale, Director of Precision Agriculture

AAM to Exhibit at AIMS Mackay Conference

AAM will be exhibiting at the Mackay Regional AIMS Conference on Wednesday 9 May to Thursday 10 May at the Mackay Grand Suites, North Queensland.

AAM is delighted to be one of the select few to sponsor at the event and will be showcasing our advanced capabilities that are used extensively across the mining industry for collection, analysis and presentation of geospatial information. Our advanced capabilities include surveying, aerial survey, high resolution Satellite Imagery, 3D visualisation and web mapping solutions.

The AIMS Conference is expecting to host approximately 80 delegates from around the State. Feel free to drop by our exhibition table and speak to either Jamie Hansen or Rob Clout about any of your mining service requirements (or just for a general chat).

We look forward to seeing you at the Mackay AIMS conference on Wednesday 9 May.

Democratic Republic of The Congo

A satellite ortho mosaic created from 5m resolution RapidEye data is now available. Specify your area of interest to us and AAM will forward a proposal and provision of a data sample. This existing imagery provides a recent overview of the region.

Click here for the product brochure (2Mb PDF)

Above: RapidEye satellite imagery example over the DRC

Post Tropical Cyclone Lua Satellite Imagery

Post cyclone satellite imagery is available for several areas of Western Australia between 19-25 March 2012. This imagery adds to the growing archive of recent imagery over Western Australia. The wealth of multi-temporal data of WA is now available for environmental monitoring purposes as well as various project feasibility tasks. For more information contact our WA office or phone +61 8 9228 6800.

Above: Post Tropical Cyclone Lua satellite imagery coverage

Below: Number of RapidEye images over WA as of February 2012
(e.g. the dark red has been imaged more than 50 times since 2009)

Mongolia: Archive Satellite Imagery Now Available

Given the increasing interest in Mongolia's major mineral deposits including gold, copper, uranium and coal, AAM recently completed an analysis of satellite imagery archives with spatial resolutions ranging from 50cm to 5m. Contact us for our analysis results over your required areas.

New capture of multispectral and stereo satellite data can be scheduled in upcoming months for any specific requirements.

Contact Brett Johnson for further information.

Above: 50cm GeoEye-1 satellite imagery within Mongolia

Below: 5m RapidEye satellite imagery -
red areas indicate archive imagery more than 90% cloud free and less than 2 years old

Extensive Satellite Imagery Coverage over Western Australia

Above: RapidEye satellite imagery coverage over Western Australia as of February 2012

A new milestone has been reached: this month the Western Australian archive of RapidEye satellite imagery has surpassed 1.75 million sq km.

Satellite imagery coverage over Western Australia has increased significantly in the past few months. Almost 3,000 RapidEye image tiles with less than 20% cloud cover were acquired this year alone over Western Australia.

Agencies so far purchasing the 5m orthocorrected RapidEye data over WA have been from the private sector. The new RapidEye Background Capture for WA will involve continued acquisition over important agricultural, mining and ecologically sensitive and significant areas, to provide land managers and decision-makers with the content necessary for accurate and effective monitoring, measurement and mapping support.

The major benefits of RapidEye are its broad area coverage, rapid data capture rates using its 5 identical satellites, uniform pixel size in all 5 spectral bands and its "red edge" sensing capability. This unique combination of benefits creates a compelling and valuable new data source for evaluation or application.

For sample data or a technical discussion, contact our Team here.

Zoomify of Dampier, Western Australia

AAM Exhibited Bathymetric LiDAR at Hydro 2011 Conference

AAM exhibited at the Hydro 2011 Conference from Monday 7 to Thursday 10 November at The Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, WA. Hydro 2011 in Fremantle was the latest in a series of International Hydrographic Conferences organised on behalf of the International Federation of Hydrographic Societies (IFHS) and brings together all the major stakeholders in the hydrographic survey field.

AAM presented our latest offering in our spatial toolkit: Bathymetric LiDAR.

Bathymetric LiDAR extends AAM’s decade-long success with LiDAR into the intertidal and near shore regions. Bathymetric LiDAR is able to measure the seabed down to 50m deep or more, subject to suitable water conditions. The efficiency of aerial surveying makes this technology very cost competitive against traditional vessel-based MBES methods. AAM’s bathymetric LiDAR is able to simultaneously measure terrain and bathymetry, measuring seabed, water level, sand, rocks, ground, assets and trees in a single pass of the aircraft. This capability provides total landform definition and offers considerable cost savings against bathymetry-only sensors.

To read more about Bathymetric LiDAR, click here.

AAM wins Highly commended at QLD Spatial Excellence Awards

Category: People and Community.

Project: Rapid response image products for Queensland 2011 Disasters.

AAM supplied rapid response aerial imagery to the Queensland Government for a number of Qld disasters this year. From inland floods to post Tropical Cyclone Yasi, rapid response image products were captured within hours of the disasters and supplied within several days for the priority areas.

These rapid response, post disaster image products were one of the vital foundation datasets embraced for immediate disaster assessment and emergency response efforts by Qld Fire and Rescue Service, Emergency Management Qld, Police and other agencies.

Teams of AAM personnel worked long hours for weeks on end. The aerial survey teams worked in difficult conditions to successfully exploit the small gaps in the poor weather conditions to capture imagery while office based teams worked in parallel to process the data for delivery within 2 days of capture for the priority areas.

Rob Thomas and Greg Itzstein collected the framed certificate on behalf of all AAM staff involved in these projects.

Project Background

December 31 - Town of Emerald and adjacent flooded highway imaged
January 4-8 - Surat, St George and other sites imaged at peak flood
February 5 - Post Tropical Cyclone Yasi imagery over 23 sites
April - Roma and flooded surrounds

Above: AAM Imagery utilised to aid on ground damage assessment
(Photo Source: DERM)

Port Moresby from Space - New 50cm satellite imagery available

The GeoEye-1 satellite has recently imaged the Port Moresby region over the last few months and obtained some remarkable, cloud free datasets.   High resolution, 50cm image datasets are generated through the integration of the panchromatic and multispectral information collected by the GeoEye-1 satellite.

GeoEye satellites are collecting data from an orbit ~680km above the earth and circling the earth 15 times a day.

The full library of existing archive data can be discovered online. Image overviews (such as the one shown below) are available from the publicly available, archive search tool.

Enquiries can be directed to AAM Pty Ltd, a key GeoEye Partner for Australia,  via email.

Interactive samples of imagery and other sensor information can be found on our GeoEye webpage.

Above: GeoEye imagery over Port Moresby

AAM New 3D Model Video - Christchurch City

AAM has released a new 3D model video of Christchurch CIty. This video was created immediately before the Christchurch earthquake. View the YouTube™ video on our 3D City Models webpage.

AAM and Virtual Brisbane - A Queensland Award Winner

We are excited to announce that AAM's joint submission with BCC on the 'Virtual Brisbane' Project was the overall winner in this year's Queensland Spatial Excellence Awards (QSEA). It represents the pinnacle of achievement in the geospatial industry and is the highest award the Queensland Judging Panel can confer. The winning project, submitted in partnership with our client, Brisbane City Council, was announced at the QSEA Awads held in Brisbane in early September.

The 'Virtual Brisbane' Project also took out the 2010 QSEA Award for the category of Land Development and Planning. This award recognises how innocative or unorthodox techniques, delivery mechanisms and/or methodologies in surveying, mapping, cartographi, design, planning and processes have achieved exceptional outcomes. This is an outstanding result for AAM and Brisbane City Council and highlights the unmatchedbenefits of AAM's K2Vi (Visualisation and Modelling Software tool) and AAM's 3D City Models.

Have a look at the 3D movie on our 3D model webpage.

Above from left to right: Dan Smith (BCC), Andrew Saad (BCC), Steven Jacoby (QLD Government),
Andrew Port (AAM), Andrew Wells (AAM).

AAM to attend the SSSI Victorian Surveying and Spatial Summit on Wednesday 15 September in Melbourne, Victoria

AAM will be attending the SSSI Victorian Surveying and Spatial Summit on Wednesday 15 September in Melbourne, Victoria.

Located at booth 14, AAM will be showcasing our newer offerings including RapidEye Satellite Imagery, LiDAR, Pictometry and GeoContent.

AAM strives to provide the best imagery with fast turn-around times and great service. Our latest offering, RapidEye Satellite Imagery, captures 5m ortho imagery with daily revisits over the same area. RapidEye satellite imagery is used for land cover analysis and vegetation identification, feature and boundary extraction, monitoring and change detection, damage assessment and modelling and product estimation. To find out more about RapidEye Satellite Imagery, visit our RapidEye webpage.

We look forward to seeing you at the SSSI Victorian Surveying and Spatial Summit.

AAM at the Australian Institute of Mine Surveyors (AIMS) Conference

The AIMS Conference was held at the Gold Coast in Queensland this month and was a major success for all involved.

AAM was a major Gold Sponsor of AIMS this year, ensuring the AIMS Commitee was well supported. AAM had a large group of staff present, a huge exhibition booth and a technical presentation.

Our exhibition booth was a hit among all the mining surveyors and not only because of our attractive booth set-up. Our competition – "Guess the Stockpile Volume" was exceeding popular, creating quite a buzz amongst the delegates. Our ecstatic winner was only 85 cubic meters off from the actual answer! For his mathematical skills he was rewarded with two tickets to the NRL Grand Final in Sydney, plus accommodation and spending/travel money. We also had two runner ups who walked away with AAM Sport Gift Packs, comprising of a bunch of AAM Merchandise items such as a mini CAT truck, beach pack, golf towel, stubby coolers, notebooks and model planes.

Jamie Hansen presented the AAM Technical paper. he was first up on Day One with a presentation about AAM’s new offering, “Virtual Minesite”, inspired by the futuristic possibilities now available with 3D technology. Jamie’s presentation explored some spatial information acquisition and visualisation technologies available to the mining industry right now which will form some of the stepping stones towards the "Virtual Minesite" of the future.

We found that the conference was a great opportunity to catch up - face to face - with existing clients (instead of the usual phone discussions), meet new people in the mining sector and share information about the AAM services we provide to our diverse range of clients in Australia, Africa and elsewhere.

Showcased on our exhibition booth were also our newer offerings including K2Vi 3D Modelling, GeoEye and RapidEye Satellite Imagery, Aerial Imagery, LiDAR and SiteSee(TM)

Congratulations again to the AIMS Organising Committee.

Brisbane City Council Launches

Brisbane 3D Model created by AAM and deployed by BCC

AAM Pty Ltd is proud to have contributed to Brisbane City Council’s new visualisation and planning tool, Virtual Brisbane. This innovative and fully interactive computer-generated 3D model of Brisbane aims to enhance some of the business processes with Council.

The 3D city model was built by AAM utilising aerial laser data and Pictometry^® multi angle oblique imagery. The most noticeable facet of the AAM 3D building models are their photo realistic finish. K2Vi is AAM’s visualisation package which is at the core of Virtual Brisbane and features every building and structure in a 5km radius in the CBD. The model spans an area of more than 100sqkm, contains models for more than 100,000 structures and is the largest 3D city model in the southern hemisphere.

Virtual Brisbane is a centrally-located master record of all urban development activity. This tool will help Council Planners show residents the impacts of Neighbourhood Planning and also help residents understand the future of their neighbourhood and city. Virtual Brisbane will shortly become fully available to the public through web hosting so they can log on and navigate through the model and look at suburbs undergoing neighbourhood planning by the end of 2011.

The model reinforces Council’s role as Australia’s largest Local Government and a World Class city. Virtual Brisbane plays a leading role in strategic planning advancement, and in investigating, trialing and implementing leading-edge technology to improve the level of service to internal and external stakeholders.

AAM has produced a number of 3D models of capital cities in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, including Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, Wellington and Cape Town. These models are proving to be valuable tools to Councils for a variety of planning and development requirements.

For more information, visit our 3D models page, or view the Virtual Brisbane video below.

AAM becomes Associate Member of the Australian Defence Force RPDE Program

Above: Nigel Conolly and Mark Freeburn (AAM) accepting the RPDE membership

AAM Pty Ltd is pleased to announce their Associate Membership of the Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) Program of the Australian Department of Defence.

The RPDE Program combines Defence Force knowledge and experience with key industry partner resources and expertise, in an effort to identify and develop solutions to combat potential threats or breaches to Australian Defence Force security.

The RPDE program is uniquely able to rapidly draw together Defence and industry knowledge, experience and Intellectual Property to understand problems, identify potential solutions and provide evidence supporting decision support and change management recommendations. AAM will become a point of contact for issues requiring spatial information solutions.

AAM is recognised as one of Australia’s leading geospatial organisations with more than 150 specialist geospatial staff in eight offices across Australia and a suite of innovative, high resolution geospatial data solutions.

For more information on AAM's GIS services, visit our webpage here.