Thursday, October 05, 2006
More Digital Images of the Canary Islands
ArchipielagoNoticias have an interesting report which says that the Council for the Environment and Territorial Management for the Canary Islands Government has signed an agreement with the main directorate of the National Geographic Institute, a dependant of the Ministry of Promotion, for the realization of high resolution digital images of all of the territory of the autonomous community.
The agreement which has been sealed by the autonomous councillor of the environmental department, Domingo Berriel, and the general manager of the ministerial organization, Alberto Sereno, contemplates an investment of 245,751 euros for the execution of the project during this year.
The Ministry will assume 66% of the costs and the Council, 34%.
The object of the agreement, which will conclude at the end of the year, although it can be renewed annually, is the realization and periodic updating of of high resolution aerial photographs of the 744,700 hectares that make up the territory of the Canary Islands, covered by the 148 sheets of the National Topographical Map.
The functions that the Council for the Environment and Territorial Management will assume in respect to this work are the realization of the precision, high resolution images obtained by the photographic flights, as well as modelling of elevations of the terrain, obtained through auto-correlation during the processing.
The autonomous department will deliver the digital copies, negatives and originals to the Ministry of Promotion, as well as the models of the elevations of the terrain.
Reading that, I am assuming that this is precision stuff that will be used by the Government (for planning, for military use, etc.) There is no mention of this becoming available to the public, although that does not mean that it will not, eventually. But it does leave me with questions: Isn't this somewhat of an overlap or duplication with the work being carried out by Grafcan (who are a publicly, i.e. Government owned company)? Are the public being served something different, and if so why?
As we read in this previous report, someone from Google came to the archipelago in August 2005 to make an agreement with Grafcan for the images that currently show for the archipelago in Google Maps and Google Earth. Those images do appear to be old and also appear to be partially censored, which led to serious criticisms.
It remains to be seen exactly why, but this report of yet another and, seemingly different set of images being made, I think, can only add fuel to this fire.
Canarias contará con imágenes digitalizadas de todo el territorio de la Comunidad Autónoma
