Acquisition and updating of ATKIS using satellite remote sensing imagery

Remote sensing is one of the workhorses of topographic and thematic mapping of large areas of the Earth surface and is a prime data source for the acquisition and updating of topographic geo-data at small scales. Satellite imagery of a sub-meter ground resolution in the panchromatic channel, which has been announced for some time and will most probably be available in the near future, has the potential to be also useful in medium scale applications. Along with the better resolution a change of automatic image exploitation techniques from purely pixel-based multi-spectral classification to model-based image analysis, and an increasing integration with GIS (geographic information system) can be observed.