To facilitate the distribution of statewide imagery datasets, Oregon State University teamed up with a GIS developer to create an imagery distribution and provisioning Web portal.

In the predawn hours, while most Londoners are sound asleep, fixed-wing airplanes equipped with IFSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) methodically fly overhead at 30,000 feet. They traverse the airspace in tight strips, as if they were mowing a lawn. The pilots are not on a covert spy mission. They've been commissioned by Intermap Technologies to collect terrain data as part of a project to map Europe in 3D. And what these planes are doing in the sky can potentially help drivers on the ground save fuel one day -- a result not even Intermap predicted.

Humans' innate curiosity and fascination with what lurks within the natural environment around them and beyond them has launched a healthy voyeuristic market of "tours" — whale watching tours, safari tours, exotic bird tours, mountain gorilla tours.

A View from Above Myriad new airborne sensors and a civil-sector space race have changed the way we acquire and use remote sensing data. July 2005 Geospatial Solutions

From the time Napoleon employed the French balloon corps in the 1798 Egyptian Battle of Aboukir, leaders have understood how the unique view provided by aerial surveillance benefits strategic planning. The Wright Brothers' development of the airplane almost a century ago provided yet another platform from which military planners could view entire battle scenes and inventory enemies' resources.

A View from Above Myriad new airborne sensors and a civil-sector space race have changed the way we acquire and use remote sensing data. July 2005 Geospatial Solutions

From the time Napoleon employed the French balloon corps in the 1798 Egyptian Battle of Aboukir, leaders have understood how the unique view provided by aerial surveillance benefits strategic planning. The Wright Brothers' development of the airplane almost a century ago provided yet another platform from which military planners could view entire battle scenes and inventory enemies' resources.