Abstract
Remote sensing is commonly performed via airborne platforms such as satellites, specialized aircraft, and unmanned aerial systems (UASs), which perform airborne photography using mounted cameras. However, they are limited by their coverage (UASs), irregular flyover frequency (aircraft), and/or low spatial resolution (satellites) due to their high altitude. In this paper, we examine the utilization of commercial flights as an airborne platform for remote sensing. Namely, we simulate a situation where all aircraft on commercial flights are equipped with a mounted camera used for airborne photography. The simulation is used to estimate coverage, the temporal and spatial resolution of aerial imagery acquired this way, as well as the storage capacity required for storing all imagery data. The results show that Europe is 83.28 percent covered with an average of one aerial photography every half an hour and a ground sampling distance of 0.96 meters per pixel. Capturing such imagery results in 20 million images or four petabytes of image data per day. More detailed results are given in the paper for separate countries/territories in Europe, individual commercial airlines and alliances, as well as three different cameras.
Highlights
Remote sensing includes many applications such as [1]: planning towards sustainable agriculture, monitoring and studying the bio-geological characteristics of oceans, water security and management, environmental assessment and monitoring, disaster monitoring and mitigation, weather and climate studies, and infrastructure development
We examine the feasibility of remote sensing by means of commercial flights, where an aircraft is mounted with a camera and used as an airborne platform
It is commonly measured as the ground sampling distance (GSD), which defines a distance between the centers of two pixels, i.e., a ground sampling distance of 10 meters means that every pixel of an image obtained by the sensor covers a ground area of 10 m × 10 m
Summary
Remote sensing includes many applications such as [1]: planning towards sustainable agriculture, monitoring and studying the bio-geological characteristics of oceans, water security and management, environmental assessment and monitoring, disaster monitoring and mitigation, weather and climate studies, and infrastructure development. Both UAS and aircraft provide ad hoc frequency for aerial imagery due to their inability to remain in the air for a long time, unlike satellites that orbit the Earth in regular intervals [2]. The term remote sensing is used to describe information gathering from a distant target, i.e., an object or a phenomenon, without making physical contact with the target [2] It is typically done by using satellites, aircraft, and recently UAS [6], which collect data reflected from the Earth’s surface. During the last more than 160 years, besides hot air balloons, platforms used for aerial imagery include blimps, kites, fixed-wing manned aircraft, rockets, pigeons, parachutes, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or “drones”), and satellites [6]
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