HRS: A New Instrument for Display of Land Features as a 3D Model

The system in discussion is a new tool and capability on the SPOTS satellite sensor, which we were eagerly waiting for. SPOT IMAGE and its partners have gained very good results out of this key innovation for customers of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) and geometrically corrected images with appropriate precision. On the SPOTS satellite a system called High Resolution Stereoscopic (HRS) was designed over a period of five years for creation of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for a coverage of 30 to 50 million square meters (one-third of the earth’s drylands). HRS is able to provide almost simultaneous topographic (stereo) images from very large areas. Its coverage is 120x600 km at every passage of satellite. This sensor will provide 126,000 square kilometers of coverage stereo images in just one day. This remarkable ability to provide stereo images at the same time is a step forward, not only for production of a digital elevation model (DEM) in vast areas and topographic maps, but also for automatic production of vertical images with very high geometric precision.