PART 3: WHAT DOES RESOLUTION MEAN

Let's be absolutely clear from the start. Spatial resolution or Ground Sampling Distance (GSD) does not equal resolution. I'm sorry for all NEA investors who have again been fooled either by their own naivety or lack of technical knowledge in their own investments.

NEA doesn't report its pixel resolution, however for those who actually know what they are talking about, know the information NEA have made public, it is theoretically impossible to achieve a resolution even close to SFI. Lets look at what we know. NEA's official marketing material state they have a 7cm GSD and 75cm Accuracy. Even if we assume the GSD distance is 5cm, their accuracy is 245% worse off than SFI's so its mathematically impossible to be anywhere near SFI. I used SFI resolution against NEA's GSD because its all we have available to us but in actual fact if we had NEA's actual resolution, that 40% difference would be flattering.

https://go.nearmap.com/hubfs/pdf/solution_briefs/PhotoMaps-Datasheet.pdf?t=1513615210132

Resolution is the true secret sauce for aerial imagery companies so explaining exactly how SFI achieve their resolution of 5cm is impossible. But I'll attempt to give you an understanding of how resolution is derived broadly.

A digital image comprises of a two dimensional array of individual picture elements called pixels arranged in columns and rows. Each pixel represents an area on the Earth's surface. A pixel has an intensity value and a location address in the two dimensional image.

Spatial resolution refers to the size of the smallest object that can be resolved on the ground. In a digital image, the resolution is limited by the pixel size, the smallest resolvable object cannot be smaller than the pixel size. The intrinsic resolution of an imaging system is determined primarily by the instantaneous field of view (IFOV) of the sensor, which is a measure of the ground area viewed by a single detector element in a given instant in time. However this intrinsic resolution is degraded by other factors which introduce blurring of the image, such as improper focusing, atmospheric scattering, target motion, even curvature of the earth to name just a few elements. The pixel size is determined by the sampling distance.

The important thing to remember is that GSD is a variable measure. Anyone can capture a 5cm GSD, you just need to fly lower to the ground but then your capture costs would become so high you'd be out of business before landed back at the airport.

As an illustration, below are two pictures taken at the same GSD and its very clear the resolutions are widely different.

The takeaway here is that resolution describes what can actually be discerned on an image once factors such as target contrast, atmospheric condition, noise, overlapping and resampling have been accounted for, which are all factors that account for the value of the pixel's intensity. This is the secret sauce that holds all the data driving resolution, big data and analytics.

This is a very top level explanation and I hope it helps.

Merry Christmas SFI investors