Mr Crowther said NearMap, a subsidiary of publicly listed...

Mr Crowther said NearMap, a subsidiary of publicly listed Australian company Ipernica, made the shots available free of charge to the Brisbane City Council ...


January 21, 2011

Company's before-and-after shots instantly accessible online

HIGH-RESOLUTION aerial photography coupled with digital technology developed by an Australian company have made the unfolding drama of Brisbane's floods viewable to anyone with a computer, in near real time.

Perth company NearMap, which has been in commercial operation for only a year, was in the right place at the right time when the flood crisis hit.

NearMap has been able to provide images of the complete geography of the Brisbane damage to emergency response agencies.

"We can create the ability to make precise comparisons, which in the past would take months, available in as little as a day," said NearMap chief executive Simon Crowther.

Mr Crowther said NearMap, a subsidiary of publicly listed Australian company Ipernica, made the shots available free of charge to the Brisbane City Council and state governments.

Other beneficiaries have been millions of people around the world who have hit the ABC's website, where some extraordinarily graphic before/after shots have been posted from NearMap.

One pair shows an overpass on the Ipswich Road near Rocklea before the floods, and then covered with stranded trucks and cattle after they hit.

The Jindalee swimming pool is its pristine azure one day, then swamped and invisible beneath a brown soup the next.

Another pair of shots shows the warship HMAS Diamantina sitting in dry dock, then afloat, though it was not clear if this was because of the floods.

The shots are the product of unique and patented technology developed by NearMap, which won a prize for innovation in the 2009 Western Australian Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards.

NearMap contracts Cessna aircraft, whose pilots have special computer guidance systems to enable them fly to highly accurate grids, to survey cities at monthly intervals with a pod of cameras that shoot a programmed series of vertical and oblique shots.

The data is then processed and mapped by NearMap software in Perth, and put online on its subscription website.

The combination of technologies makes NearMap able to offer subscribers the chance to find high-resolution images of their chosen precise locations, and a data bank to show how the image has changed over time.

Among NearMap's clients are the federal Department of Climate Change, and agencies that monitor compliance questions such as installation of solar panels.

From

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/companys-before-and-after-shots-instantly-accessible-online/story-fn59niix-1225991959399