serendipityoucity

I was chatting with Ken yesterday about a bunch of fun things at a fine Chinese Restaurant in my hood.  One of his questions got me digging this morning and it was sort of like this - is it possible to access current satellite images as opposed to the pre-packaged outdated ones we get to view in the media? 

And, of course you can access whatever you want to the finest level of granularity & resolution, if one is a big fromage scientist or industrialist (e.g. mining, oil tycoon) associated with a big organization and/or one has lots of mullah. I am also sure there is a fun archive or portal somewhere with up to the minute images. But alas, its sunny and its gardening & soccer season so…

But no, i could not let it sit at that! So during morning surf and java i serendipitously came across the International Charter "Space and Major Disasters" site on the Cartography Blog (my favorite!). The Charter provides

a unified system of space data acquisition and delivery to those affected by natural or man-made disasters through Authorized Users. Each member agency has committed resources to support the provisions of the Charter and thus is helping to mitigate the effects of disasters on human life and property.

This is how it works: 

A 24-hour on-duty operator receives the call, checks the identity of the requestor and verifies that the User Request form sent by the Authorized User is correctly filled up. The operator passes the information to an Emergency On-Call Officer who analyzes the request and the scope of the disaster with the Authorized User, and prepares an archive and acquisition plan using available space resources. Data acquisition and delivery takes place on an emergency basis, and a Project Manager, who is qualified in data ordering, handling and application, assists the user throughout the process.

Fabulous! The Canadian Space Agency (CAS) is a signatory providing RADARSAT feeds when required and their list of recent activations is very impressive.  So nice, and as previously discussed there are some great satellite imagery applications.

Otherwise as a regular citizen, in boring non calamatic times you can place a special image order at the CSA (see the price list) or you can purchase some from the company that

holds the exclusive distribution of RADARSAT data MDA. 

Ken mentioned Terraserver, and true enough, posters can be purchased, and you can look at images of interest.  Then of course there is Google maps.  But alas, it is entertainment, since you are not sure about the quality of what you are seeing, how up to date the data are, and when you dig a little deeper you realize it is a big product placement for huge geomatics map and satellite imagery corporations.  On a naive day, but not today for me, it is fun to play with.  

But if you go digging for Google maps metadata well, things get a little spotty, according to Answers.com:

the small patches of high-resolution satellite imagery are largely provided by DigitalGlobe and its QuickBird satellite, with some imagery also from government sources.

I could not find the government sources!  Although i heard that Geogratis data were accessed by Google.  The global image base for Google maps

called NaturalVue was derived from Landsat 7 imagery by MDA Federal (formerly Earth Satellite Corporation ). This global image base provide the essential foundation for the entire application.

and

All the images shown in Google Maps’ satellite mode are at least a year old and in some places up to five years old.

Hmmmmm! MDA again! Sa sent le poisson!

According to Google the imagery data:

found in "Satellite" mode is sourced predominantly from DigitalGlobe and EarthSat. Although the frequency of updates may vary, we strive to refresh our map data consistently.

EarthSat is MDA again! Not allot of metadata about the data sources, how they are assembled, licensed and so on! I guess reliability, accuracy and authenticity are not high on their priority list nor is referencing the data sources currently being viewed seem possible. Also not much about the relationships between Google, MDA and company.

I’m guessing that most of us just play with Google maps, which is tons o fun, but lets not forget that it is big product placement Ad for for MDA, Navteq, DigitalGlobe and TeleAtlas.  The few government data sets it includes are not referenced and as I peruse these data companies, i’m thinking our few government data producing orgs are really small fromages compared to these corporations and I wonder if it is possible:

• To copyright my exclusive postage stamp garden to prevent satellite corporations from including a picture of it in the images sets they sell;
  
• then could i sell pay per view rights of my garden patch?

Imagine! If everyone told them they could only use images of their place if they share the data for free.  So you could have a big pixelized view of the earth, and erase your pixelized spot until which time the satellite companies paid you to use it in their data sets or made the data free?

So let me see if i have it straight: 

• Satellites and radars are owned by governments in a variety of cost share partnership arrangements with private sector corporations;
• there is a whole regulatory and geostrategic regime related to orbit rights, feed rights, data ownership, launching the darn things (Dale Armstrong where are you when i need you!) and heretofore which could say prevent me, my 5 bucks and a bunch of my friends with 5 bucks from launching our own satellite;
  
• citizens who want data from the satellites they paid for via taxation and who also paid for the officials who regulate the technologies have to purchase the data from a private sector organization;
• the data citizens acquire from the satellite feeds are subject to a whole bunch of copyright and IP laws, but Google does not seem to have to reference the data they acquire and show;
  
• and if you are from a developing country and your state does not have the resources to launch a satellite, you have to acquire data from a foreign country’s satellite and go through a foreign company to pay for data about your landbase;
  
• further, the image providing company has more data about your minerals, deposits, environment etc. than you do;
• you can only get free up to date data if there is a disaster, or if it is about a topic of interest to scientists (e.g. Antarctica), or the UN is monitoring a place, etc. but not of your home or city in good uninteresting times!
• All satellite imagery is in the hands of big funded authoritative space agencies, political organizations, and corporations;
  
• and it does not look like there are citizen or NGO owned satellite and radar systems.
  

• Can a corporation make exclusive data arrangements to lets say, be the sole entities to acquire geological data related to oil deposits, diamonds, gold, etc. from a particular satellite and image retailer?
  
• Could such a corporation prevent a developing country from acquiring data about places within its boundaries cuz it has such rights?
  
• Could a state trademark views of its land surface and sub-surface data and charge pay per view rights to the image retailers & re-sellers?
  

That’s enough! My idealism has taken another hit, time for a view adjustment, so must go and eat toast and eggs, stare at some flowers, analyze some scientific portal surveys and comtemplate whether or not i will go to pick up soccer tonight!  Are there world view chiropractors?

PS - Ken I will only stop referencing that photo if you provide me with some sort of web presence thinggy, another photo or you bribe me! I’m thinking bribes work