Session Abstract

Airborne IFSAR Mapping in Alberta: The Old Man River

Airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) mapping has attracted considerable interest in both the private and public sectors as a tool for wide-area precision mapping.

In August 2005 an airborne IFSAR data set was collected at a site selected by Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. The project resulted in a high-accuracy, high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of approximately 2,300 square kilometres centred on the Old Man River in the vicinity of the City of Lethbridge. The data has now been compared with the Alberta Provincial DEM and the Alberta Survey Control Network. The data acquisition and processing activities, the statistical results of the validation studies and considerations for the use of IFSAR in the creation of a new provincial DEM will be presented.

This presentation of the results of the first Alberta IFSAR Mapping Project is the follow-on to the introduction of airborne IFSAR presented at GeoAlberta 2005.

Speaker Biography

Hugh MacKay

Hugh MacKay is the Manager of Business Development (Canada and Europe) for Intermap Technologies of Calgary. Hugh has worked at Intermap and its predecessor company, Intera Technologies, since 1980. Over the course of his extensive career, he has specialized in airborne remote sensing, working with a variety of optical, infrared and radar sensor systems.