Company: ISTAR (france)
Industry: Local Government

The ISTAR Americas' TrueOrtho™ imagery will complement base map data provided by Baltimore's Enterprise Geographic Information Services group to over a dozen city departments and agencies.With city employees regularly accessing geographic information through the city's intranet, Baltimore is actively pursuing the application of geographic information and technology to address city issues.

The TrueOrtho imagery is also being used by Mayor Martin O'Malley's CitiStat program that has developed a national reputation for tracking city government performance and improving municipal accountability (see http://www.baltimorecity.gov/news/citistat/index.html for additional information on CitiStat and the use of geographic information in Baltimore.)

"TrueOrtho images are a great value compared to traditional orthophotography.The product is a highly accurate data set that gives us a very recent snapshot of the city," said Elliot Schlanger, Chief Information Officer for Baltimore's Mayor's Office of Information Technology."We've found that our building footprints and road edges from our 1:40-scale mapping program matched the TrueOrthoÔ images exactly.We believe this will help lower the cost of maintaining some of our planimetric data.And since there's no building lean, we can see everything we want to map...ISTAR has provided some good value."

The City of Baltimore is one of many mapping projects where ISTAR Americas has used the HRSC-AX airborne camera developed by DLR, the German Space Agency.This digital camera acquires imagery with less than one-foot pixel resolution from an altitude of 20,000 feet, allowing it to cover huge tracts of land in a single swath.In addition, the new camera operates in the near-infrared and visible portions of the spectrum, generating 24-bit false and natural-color imagery.

"ISTAR and DLR have worked as partners for many years to design and build high-resolution aerial cameras.The AX we use now is a third generation system, and is built specifically to complement our TrueOrthoÔ automated corrections system," said Mark Eustis, ISTAR Americas' Vice President of Sales and Marketing."With our technology combination, we're the only imaging firm in the world that can produce a seamless city-wide TrueOrthoÔ images and an accompanying 3D surface model in less than 90 days...and deliver consistent 1.64-foot accuracy on one-foot pixels."

TrueOrtho image mosaics are ISTAR Americas' signature dataset, although the company also produces one-meter resolution 3D surface models.TrueOrtho data are orthorectified from multiple swaths of digital HRSC-AX image data, and processed pixel-by-pixel in an automated system to ensure each point is represented in its exact horizontal and vertical position on Earth.The result is a TrueOrtho image in which all surface features are visible - even alleys, streets and the sidewalks between tall buildings - and a realistic 3D model that's an exact match to the image data.

In addition to current applications, the City of Baltimore also plans to use the ISTAR data in updating their building footprints and provide detail for city development projects."Some of our data needs can be met by reviewing the ISTAR imagery, rather than sending someone out to the field.This allows us to respond faster to data inquiries and also helps us better manage our human resources." said Schlanger.

Headquartered in Herndon, Va., ISTAR Americas Inc.maintains an archive of high-resolution TrueOrtho images and 3D surface models for over 80 of the largest US cities.ISTAR operates a number of High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) airborne imaging systems across North America.Pre-processed TrueOrtho images and 3D surfaces for cities in archive are available within 36 hours of order.Image data for Baltimore were delivered through VARGIS, a registered ISTAR Americas reseller.

About ISTAR
ISTAR is a premier cartographic products and services company, specializing in the production of digital geographic databases-imagery, 3D surfaces, and land cover information.ISTAR has geospatial data for over 6.5 million square miles of the Earth's surface.ISTAR's online HotSpots catalog contains 2,000 cities and regions in more than 100 countries, and is updated daily. ISTAR Americas, Inc.is part of EADS, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company.EADS is the second largest aerospace company in the world, with over $30 Billion in revenue in 2001.EADS is active in the fields of civil and military aircraft, space, defense systems and services.Civil market activities account for approximately 80 percent of the total company revenues.Business units include Airbus, Astrium (the manufacturer of Ariane launch rockets and operator of SPOT satellites), EADS Dornier, Eurocopter, and more.

More information on ISTAR is available at http://www.istar.com

Business Contact:
Louis Demargne
ISTAR Americas Inc.
13800 Coppermine Rd.
Herndon, VA 20171
703-234-7981
info-usa@istar.com