Earthimages

for several decades, earth-orbiting satellites have been used as platforms for imaging the earth. the commercial potential of this technology has, to date, failed to meet projections, but two critical barriers to market growth are now in the process of being removed. first, the range, coverage and potential revisit time of imaging sensors is improving significantly, meaning that most applications of earth imagery can, in principle at least, have their data requirements fully met than was the case just a few years ago. second, global positioning systems can now identify locations to a few tens of centimetres, meaning that high quality satellite imagery can be matched by high quality positional information, which is a pre-requisite for location-based services being pioneered by google and microsoft. although these two developments are essential to the development of the market, a third is required in order to more fully remove barriers to market growth. this is the ability to gain easy,