Infoterra France, a wholly-owned subsidiary of EADS Astrium and a leading provider of geo-information products and services, announced that with their Greek partner GEOMET Ltd they have won a major contract, worth over 2.86 million euros, to deliver a significant quantity of fully orthorectified imagery and Digital Surface Models (DSM) covering Greek cities. The 18 month long project, which is the biggest venture of this type ever undertaken in Europe, kicked off with ADS40 linear scanners capturing images from June to end August 2007, followed by an initial delivery in October 2007. Final delivery will take place in September 2008.
The VLSO or ‘Very Large Scale Orthophoto project’, will cover 3500 square kilometres of all major to mid-size Greek urban areas in fully orthorectified imagery and DSMs. Ktimatologio S.A. (Hellenic Cadastre) who commissioned the project, plans on using the TrueOrthos produced by Infoterra, which are lean-free, fully rectified aerial orthophotos, to produce the cadastral maps for the respective areas. This project is part of an ongoing process in Greece to set up a complete, updated, accurate digital cadastre database of the country. The TrueOrthos are produced in 20 centimetre resolution colour images, from aerial imagery captured using ADS40 (Airborne Digital Sensor developed by Leica Geosystems) cameras. The DSMs provide accurate representations of cities’ ground and above-ground features that can be employed to extract building height information. They are delivered in 80 centimetre pixels.
Infoterra France who is directing the project and undertaking all production, has called upon the expertise of three companies with whom they have often worked with in the past with great success. Aerial data acquisition has been undertaken by their sister company Infoterra Ltd, based in the UK, and Astec, an established German associate, both internationally distinguished specialists in airborne operations. The Greek company Geomet Ltd, a long-standing partner, executes initial phase of the processing in Greece and the terrestrial works, and also coordinates all administration and local logistic tasks.
"We and our partners are very proud and enthusiastic to be working together on this extremely important project, which is the first one of this magnitude in Europe”, says Jean-Michel Darroy, CEO Infoterra France. “I’m fully confident that this contract will help demonstrate throughout Europe, Infoterra France’s high production capacity and cutting-edge technology for delivering premium quality True Orthoimages," he added.