Evaluation of Cartosat-1 Multi-Scale Digital Surface Modelling Over France

On 5 May 2005, the Indian Space Research Organization launched Cartosat-1, the eleventh satellite of its constellation, dedicated to the stereo viewing of the Earth's surface for terrain modeling and large-scale mapping, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (India). In early 2006, the Indian Space Research Organization started the Cartosat-1 Scientific Assessment Programme, jointly established with the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Within this framework, this study evaluated the capabilities of digital surface modeling from Cartosat-1 stereo data for the French test sites of Mausanne les Alpilles and Salon de Provence. The investigation pointed out that for hilly territories it is possible to produce high-resolution digital surface models with a root mean square error less than 7.1 m and a linear error at 90% confidence level less than 9.5 m. The accuracy of the generated digital surface models also fulfilled the requirements of the French Reference 3D®, so Cartosat-1 data may be used to produce or update such kinds of products

Iterative Stereo Reconstruction from CCD-Line Scanner Images

Digital photogrammetrie processing of aerial and space stereo images acquired with CCD-line scanners is widely used in today´s remote sensing, surveying, and mapping of the Earth´s surface. Because of considerable geometric distortions due to movements of a scanner platform, the acquired imges have to be corrected before processing. A conventional approach consists of sequential correction and terrain reconstruaction stages. Its main drawback is that the former stage loses calibration information for restoring terrain model in a world co-ordinate frame, so that an extra processing is necessary to restore this information. We propose a more flexible approach iteratively combining both the stages. Experiments confirm that such processing holds much promise for photogrammetric processing of the line scanner stereo images