nearmap focuses on cities

NearMap Focuses on Cities Print

Wednesday 18 Feb 2009

An Australian venture capital company called Ipernica has purchased a small startup in Western Australia called NearMap.

The move has aroused interest in the industry because NearMap's founder is local entrepreneur Stuart Nixon, who created ER Mapper and later sold it to Leica Geosystems. Leica still sells the ER Mapper product, as well as its compression format, ECW and Image Web Server.

Nixon says NearMap is a vehicle to launch the next generation of technology. It is an engine for mosaicing large amounts of very high definition imagery. Its novel imaging technology is set to revolutionise the capture of 3D urban models, he says.

In 2007, Nixon discussed his work on computer vision techniques based on feature recognition. The process is presumably a realisation of this work.

Imagery is sourced from NearMap’s HyperPod aerial camera system, which consists of four oblique cameras grouped around a nadir camera. It generates about a gigabyte of raw data every second. It is the subject of a new patent in the US.

HyperVision software – which runs on supercomputer clusters distributed by the HyperWeb – processes this bit stream into a seamless image of the area. According to Ipernica, the NearMap system can produce a complete citywide image at 5 cm resolution within a few days. Other technology can take several months to complete this process.

Initial prototype and pre-production testing was carried out in Perth. Between June and November, high-resolution photomaps of the city were captured on a monthly basis.

Nixon claims to have achieved a 20-fold cost reduction in the generation of 3D models of cities. If this is substantiated, it will lead to a revolution in the aerial surveying industry. It will make it practical for city administrations to consider, at the least, annual updates of city models.

NearMap publicity says its ultimate goal is to cover 20 per cent of the world's population (which lives in 700 cities) with photomaps updated on a regular basis.

It will license its photomaps to government agencies and the real estate, insurance and resources industries, and to other commercial users.



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