Best Practice and Quality Checking of Ortho Imagery - Toward a Common Approach

One of the primary sources of reference information for the update of any administrative, cadastral or thematic-related spatial dataset is orthoimagery produced either from airborne or spaceborne sensors. Althought the classical methods for processing and validation of remote sensing data are well established and provide straigthforward approach, the rapid introduction of digital airborn imaging systems in the market poses new challenges with respect to the implementation of standartized approach for production and quality control. The �Guidelines for Best Practice and Quality Checking of Ortho Imagery� document, developed by GeoCAP team of Agriculture Unit, JRC, aimed to provide the European Commission and the remote sensing user community with a general framework of the best approaches for quality checking of orthorectified remotely sensed imagery, and the expected best practice, required to achieve good results. These guidelines were used as a core reference document in the Control with Remote Sensing Program of the European Commission, supporting the Common Agriculture Policy. In this respect, they apply to digital orthoimagery products, generated from either film cameras or digital instruments, on both airborne or satellite platforms, used in the management, monitoring and control of agricultural subsidies and to some degree (particularly very high spatial resolutions) large scale mapping or cadastre applications. In 2007, a revision of these guidelines, was initiated in order to incoprorate the new sensors and techologies emerged (for example, the airborne digital cameras) and to make the document more generic, consolidating all the changes and ammendments done in the last years. Attention was given to the important and common steps in the photogrammetric process, and to the definition of quality control checks (ISO compliant), which are clear to understand and easy to apply. The work for the revision and optimization of the JRC Guidelines could be valuable also for the elaboration of the specification for orthoimagery on Pan-European level in the frame of INSPIRE.

JRC.G.3 - Agriculture