Sanborn, a geographic information system (GIS), photogrammetric, and remote-sensing services provider, is now using ESRI’s ArcGIS Image Server to provide its clients access to large imagery datasets. By enabling imagery to be quickly served to the Web, ArcGIS Image Server significantly reduces the turnaround time from image capture to review for Sanborn customers’ quality assurance (QA) activities.
ArcGIS Image Server takes imagery in its native format, mosaics it, and lets end users perform enhancements on the fly. It can serve imagery to multiple clients including GIS, CAD, imaging, and Web clients. Imagery Sanborn captures can now be removed from the sensor in its raw form, loaded into ArcGIS Image Server, and served almost immediately. This fast turnaround is critical to numerous Sanborn imagery end users such as disaster responders and local government.
As a company that processes hundreds of terabytes of data per month, Sanborn immediately saw the advantages of ArcGIS Image Server and became an ESRI implementation partner. ArcGIS Image Server serves massive amounts of imagery to client applications without the need to extensively preprocess or alter the source data. This capability intrigued Sanborn because part of the company’s delivery process is facilitating a client QA review so that users can immediately check imagery and provide feedback.
ArcGIS Image Server, combined with ArcGIS Server, makes it possible for clients to perform QA reviews online rather than wait for datasets to be processed and delivered on CD or other storage devices. The online QA tool also reduces quality check error rates while ensuring customer requirements are met. Users are granted entry to the image Web application via secure login privileges to access a particular project. Clients may add to the project QA flags that require additional review, and these become immediately available inside ArcSDE for viewing by Sanborn’s production staff. They, in turn, are able to make fast, responsive changes to the imagery such as color balancing and edgematching.
ArcGIS Image Server also provides metadata such as imagery acquisition dates and sensor attributes. The online solution will significantly reduce client feedback time and expedite final quality delivery to the customer.
"By offering immediacy and consistency, ArcGIS Image Server helps provide a turnkey solution in which Sanborn can offer clients the ability to easily manage large datasets through a time-saving quality assurance process," said John Copple, chief executive officer of Sanborn. "With this partnership, we are able to deliver complete end-to-end solutions for our customers and effectively give them the information and support they need."