- Author: Sean Hogan
ESRI held its first ‘Imagery Education Summit' in Redlands California this week, and even though I came with high expectations, I was still pleasantly surprised with the caliber of the summit's presentations. It is very difficult to pick out a favorite among these talks; however, I can say that I particularly enjoyed the presentations by Jarlath O'Neil Dunn from the University of Vermont (pictured below), on ‘Success Stories and Progress' in image analysis and mapping, and by Jason Ur from Harvard University, regarding his work with ‘Drones and Archaeology Case Studies' in Iraq. The innovative approaches that they and others at the summit presented were truly inspiring!
One take-away from this event is that ESRI is making huge strides to incorporate more remote sensing processing options into ArcGIS Pro's ‘Image Analysis' toolbox. Speaking for myself, as both a remote sensing and GIS practitioner, I am excited about the prospect of being able to do more of my work within just one application environment, as opposed to doing my image stitching in Pix4D, image analysis in ENVI, and then finally my spatial analysis and mapping in ArcGIS. For the sake of efficiency, I look very forward to the day that I can do all of this in just one app.
For you drone enthusiasts out there, one neat new feature in the ArcGIS Pro Image Analysis tools is basic image stitching for producing color balanced orthomosaics and digital surface model outputs. This new function is not at the level of what Pix4D or Drone-to-Map can do yet, but for basic RGB image processing it may be good enough for many people's needs. Plus, it is a brand new tool that is bound to improve over time.
A couple more neat news items that were mentioned at the summit include:
- ESRI now offers a FREE ‘Schools Mapping Software Bundle', which includes both fully functional ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online licenses for every K-12 school worldwide. http://www.esri.com/industries/education/software-bundle#.
- ESRI also now offers free ‘Massive Open Online Courses' (MOOCs), which among other things include approximately 30 courses on working with imagery alone, http://www.esri.com/mooc/imagery.
The future for spatial science has never looked brighter!
Many of us have watched in horror and sadness over the previous week as fires consumed much of the beautiful hills and parts of the towns of Napa and Sonoma Counties. Many of us know people who were evacuated with a few minutes' notice - I met a retired man who left his retirement home with the clothes on his back. Many other friends lost everything - house, car, pets. It was a terrible event - or series of events as there were many active fires. During those 8+ days all of us were glued to our screens searching for up-to-date and reliable information on where the fires were, and how they were spreading. This information came from reputable, reliable sources (such as NASA, or the USFS), from affected residents (from Twitter and other social media), and from businesses (like Planet, ESRI, and Digital Globe who were sometimes creating content and sometimes distilling existing content), and from the media (who were ofen using all of the above). As a spatial data scientist, I am always thinking about mapping, and the ways in which geospatial data and analysis plays an increasingly critical role in disaster notification, monitoring, and response. I am collecting information on the technological landscape of the various websites, media and social media, map products, data and imagery that played a role in announcing and monitoring the #TubbsFire, #SonomaFires and #NapaFires. I think a retrospective of how these tools, and in particular how the citizen science aspect of all of this, helped and hindered society will be useful.
In the literature, the theoretical questions surrounding citizen science or volunteered geography revolve around:
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Accuracy – how accurate are these data? How do we evaluate them?
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Access – Who has access to the data? Are their technological limits to dissemination?
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Bias (sampling issues)/Motivation (who contributes) are critical.
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Effectiveness – how effective are the sites? Some scholars have argued that VGI can be inhibiting.
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Control - who controls the data, and how and why?
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Privacy - Are privacy concerns lessened post disaster?
I think I am most interested in the accuracy and effectiveness questions, but all of them are important. If any of you want to talk more about this or have more resources to discuss, please email me: maggi@berkeley.edu, or Twitter @nmaggikelly.
Summary so far. This will be updated as I get more information.
Outreach from ANR About Fires
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ANR has a number of programs dedicated to fire preparedness, recovery, and prevention.
Core Geospatial Technology During Fires
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Wildfire products
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Fire perimeters from https://www.geomac.gov/services.shtml
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The Active Fire Perimeters layer is a product of Geospatial Multi-Agency Coordination (GeoMAC). In order to give fire managers near real-time information, fire perimeter data is updated daily based upon input from incident intelligence sources, GPS data, infrared (IR) imagery from fixed wing and satellite platforms.”
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MODIS hot spots from USFS Active Fire Mapping Program. MODIS The MODIS instrument is on board NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra (EOS AM) and Aqua (EOS PM) satellites. In addition to lots of other data, MODIS delivers Channel 31 brightness temperature (in Kelvins) of a hotspot/active fire pixel.
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For more on how these are made: http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=b4ce4179b04f47e4ba79e234205565c1
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WebGIS sites
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Media using maps (super short list)
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http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2017/interactive-map-wine-country-fires/
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NYTimes: Minutes to Escape: How One California Wildfire Damaged So Much So Quickly. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/california-fire-damage-map.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
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NYTimes: How California's Most Destructive Wildfire Spread, Hour by Hour. OCT. 21, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/21/us/california-fire-damage-map.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
- SFGate focusing on SkyIMD: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/incredible-aerial-photos-wine-country-fires-12285123.php
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Social media
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Twitter: #sonomafires, #napafires, #tubbsfire
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Flickr: SonomaFires, TubbsFires, NapaFires, etc.
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Core Technology for Post-Fire Impact
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High resolution imagery collection and analysis
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From satellite
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Planet has made fire imagery available: https://www.planet.com/pulse/northern-california-wildfire-satellite-data-available-for-access/
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Digital Globe + MapBox made a post-fire tool: (Author: @robinkraft
Email: rkraft4@gmail.com, Github repo, Source: Overview News // DigitalGlobe 2017): https://robinkraft.github.io/norcal-fires-imagery/compare.html; https://blog.mapbox.com/santa-rosa-fire-satellite-imagery-a31b6dfefdf8
- Digital Globe - Open Data Program: https://www.digitalglobe.com/opendata
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Sonoma Veg Map Program has a few links to interesting stuff including ArcGIS Server Drone and Digital Globe Imagery: http://sonomavegmap.org/blog/2017/10/17/fires/
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From aircraft
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I know SkyIMD was flying the entire time.
- First Map - Flights 10/11-10/14/17 Here: http://www.skyimd.com/napa-sonoma-fire-imagery-map/
- Second Map - Flight 10/20/17 - Here: http://www.skyimd.com/napa-sonoma-fire-imagery-map-2/
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From drone:
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Greg Crutsinger from @droneScholars made this available: Aftermath of #TubbsFire: https://www.mapbox.com/bites/00382/#18/38.4763/-122.74861
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Open Aerial Map has one drone image not sure the source https://map.openaerialmap.org/#/-122.7497720718384,38.471986484020334,16/square/023010201213/59e62be93d6412ef7220c4c0?_k=hm0j7l
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Notes on where to find historical aerial imagery (thanks to Kass Green): The USDA has an archive of aerial imagery in Salt Lake City at APFOhttp://www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-services/aerial-photography/index. There is a ArcGIS online map of the tiles and dates of this photos. Search in ArcGIS online for the AFPO Historical Availability Tile Layer. USDA is in the process of scanning these photos, but you can order them through a manual process now (which can take a long time).
The EROS data center in Sioux Falls also has an archive of high altitude photos for the US from the 1980s. Also check out https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/NHAP and https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/NAPP . These photos are available digitally, but are not terrain corrected or georeferenced.
How many times has NAIP been acquired for California?
According to DFG, we have:
- NAIP 2014 aerial imagery, 1 m, 4 variations (natural color, 4-band, CIR/false color, NDVI)
- NAIP 2012 aerial imagery, 1 m, 4 variations (natural color, 4-band, CIR/false color, NDVI)
- NAIP 2010 aerial imagery, 1 m, 4 variations (natural color, 4-band, CIR/false color, NDVI)
- NAIP 2009 aerial imagery, 1 m, 4 variations (natural color, 4-band, CIR/false color, NDVI)
- NAIP 2005 aerial imagery, 1 m (natural color)
I was not aware the flight schedule was this frequent.
Still, I can't find a definitive information source that helps.
As part of the massive ongoing effort to map Sonoma County with high-res imagery and lidar, historic imagery of the county was collected and georeferenced. The Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District funded SFEI to mosaic 72 historic aerials taken over Sonoma County by the Department of Defense in 1942. Mark Tukman put together this web service with a image swiping tool showing the combination of the 2011 imagery service and the mosaiced historic imagery.
Sonomaopenspace.maps.arcgis.com
About the historic imagery: In 1942, the Department of War collected air photos in anticipation of a possible strike. These photos are the earliest complete image set for Sonoma County and give us an unprecedented look at Sonoma County's agriculture and open space prior to the post World War II baby boom.
These images are snaps from the service, both from an area outside Rohnert Park in Sonoma County: on the bottom is the image from 1942, on the top is the area in 2011 showing considerable development.
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