Terralink hopes digital maps will lead to riches

By ADAM GIFFORD

Mapping company Terralink hopes its attempt to convert satellite imagery into highly detailed digital maps will be a route to export riches.

The firm, rebuilt by new investors after the former state-owned enterprise was put into receivership, has received $500,000 from the Government's business growth fund for its satellite remote sensing project.

Seyed Miri, the remote sensing and geographic information systems specialist in charge of the project, said the team was taking high-resolution satellite imagery of Marlborough and turning it into maps.

These will be checked against existing maps made by processing aerial photographs.

Terralink is using data from the Quickbird satellite, which gives a panchromatic or black and white image of a 16.5km square of the Earth's surface to about 60cm resolution, and a multispectral image to a resolution of about 2.4m.

It also works with images from the older Ikonos satellite, which offers 1m panchromatic resolution and 4m multispectral resolution of an 11km square.

Automating the data processing is key to the project, as it could remove significant cost.

Miri said satellite images cost about the same as it costs Terralink to get its own aerial images.

"One of the main applications of the imagery is overseas, in places where you cannot fly."

Terralink has done downstream work on some overseas mapping contracts, and works in Australia.

But it has not been able to put in full bids for lucrative border-mapping contracts in Africa and the Middle East because it has no planes flying there.

Miri said as satellite archive data became cheaper, Terralink would be able to develop applications for land management, environmental monitoring and emergency services.