April 2019
“Heights” Special Edition of xyHt Aerial Mapping – Spring 2019
Midwest Aerial Innovates with Nighttime Imagery
A geospatial services firm that specializes in building geographic information systems for airports (aka Airports GIS) faced a mapping challenge it had encountered before that’s common to airfields. GeoPro Consultants, LLC, based in Dayton, Ohio, had been tasked with indentifying and mapping the precise locations of more than 10,000 lights and signs that provide illumination for pilots on the runways, taxiways, and aprons of major U.S.
September 2014
xyHt Aerial Mapping – Fall 2014
Midwest Aerial continues to support FAA Airport Obstruction Surveys
Midwest Aerial has been supporting our client’s image acquisitions needs since 1989 for projects ranging in size from statewide imagery collections to individual landfills and engineering design scale mapping projects located throughout the United States and Canada. Since 2010, a majority of our acquisition has been done utilizing one of our three highly accurate DMCII-140 digital sensors. This accuracy of the sensor has been proven to be approximately ½ pixel horizontally and 1 pixel vertically but our clients have measured the vertical accuracy to be…
July 2013
ASPRS Journal
Guidelines for the In Situ Geometric Calibration of the Aerial Camera System
Since the inception of photogrammetry, camera calibration has been an essential part of the photogrammetric process. In the early years of photogrammetry, specialized camera calibration equipment was developed by camera manufacturers and used in their production of cameras. Government agencies also developed custom calibration equipment to ensure that their camera systems were functioning properly. All camera calibrations were performed in a laboratory environment although different calibration methods were used…
Spring 2013
Professional Surveyor Aerial Mapping
Ensuring Quality
North Carolina raises the bar for orthoimage accuracy in a statewide project
Aerial mapping companies Spatial Data Consultants (SDC) and Midwest Aerial Photography each have vast experience in airborne image acquisition in support of surveying, engineering, and GIS mapping initiatives varying in scope and size. But neither firm had been involved in an image-quality validation process as thorough as the one designed for the North Carolina Coastal Orthoimagery Project that began in early 2012…
Fall 2012
Professional Surveyor Aerial Mapping
Midwest Aerial Devises Custom Collection Strategy to Acquire True Orthoimagery of Canadian Capital
Midwest Aerial Devises Custom Collection Strategy to Acquire True Orthoimagery of Canadian Capital Concerned with the potential for building lean in aerial imagery over downtown Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s National Capital Commission released an RFP calling for acquisition and delivery of true orthoimagery in which every pavement edge and sidewalk would be clearly visible between tall buildings. TDB Consultants Inc., a Canadian resource management firm, teamed with Midwest Aerial Photography to provide distortion-free orthomosaics that met the Commission’s stringent specifications…
Spring 2012
Professional Surveyor Aerial Mapping Resource guide
Midwest Aerial Selects Z/I DMC II 140 for Low-altitude, Engineering-grade Mapping
Grant Park is often called downtown Chicago’s front yard. Home to world-famous museums and numerous entertainment venues, the park is the center of all things cultural in the Windy City. Located between Lakeshore Drive and North Michigan Avenue, the sprawling space plays host to the latest in art, music, architecture, technology, and landscape design. For decades, Grant Park has served as one of Chicago’s most popular destination attractions for residents and tourists alike. In spring 2011, redevelopment plans called for mapping a 45-acre section just west of Millennium Park, known as North Grant Park, at engineering-grade spatial resolution and accuracy…
Spring 2012
Professional Surveyor Aerial Mapping Resource guide
Midwest Aerial Demonstrates Benefits of Digital Acquisition in Ottawa National Forest
Just four days after receiving the notice to proceed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Midwest Aerial Photography had its aircraft onsite and ready to acquire digital imagery of the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan. And six days later, the aerial firm had successfully completed collection of 30-cm image data over the entire one-million acre national forest during an extremely tight acquisition window. Although the schedule was aggressive, the quick turnaround wasn’t the only thing that impressed the USDA Forest Service about the acquisition project…
May 2012
Professional Surveyor Magazine article – Low Light DMC II capabilities
Low (or No) Light? No Problem
As the days grow shorter in late fall and remain short through winter into early spring, the window for acquiring airborne images each day gets smaller or closes entirely, depending on the latitude. The brevity of sunlight sufficient for optical imaging in certain areas for half the year has posed a challenge to the bottom lines of aerial-acquisition operations for as long as these businesses have existed. The problems of imaging in low-light conditions are not solely associated with the sun’s seasonal track across the sky—nor are the negative impacts only financial…
April 2012
POB Magazine article – Marcellus Shale
Energy Rush
Demand for Marcellus Shale maps pushes airborne digital imaging beyond traditional limits
The Marcellus Shale has triggered a natural gas rush in the Appalachian Basin as developers race to extract the relatively inexpensive hydrocarbon and deliver it to the nearby Northeast United States, where energy demands are among the highest in the nation. With many trillions of cubic feet of recoverable gas in the ground beneath more than half a dozen states, boom towns already are springing up in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Predictably, the modern day gold rush…
January 2012
POB Magazine Editorial Profile
Midwest Aerial Acquires 3-CM Imagery with DMC II in USDA Project
For 12 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has relied on Midwest Aerial Photography to collect high-quality imagery in tight acquisition windows over thousands of sites nationwide as part of the National Resources Inventory (NRI). In 2011, Midwest Aerial assisted USDA in raising the bar for NRI imagery accuracy by capturing four-band digital imagery at a stunning 3-cm GSD with its DMC II camera during a special Digital Study pilot…