Once remote satellite image receiving infrastructure is in place, Australia will be able to really punch above its weight in this field. We simply don’t have enough satellite imaging receivers on the ground. The USA has hundreds of receivers, Australia has 3.
Earlier this month when there was an oil spill on the Great Barrier Reef, surveyors were called in to gather important spatial data. This can be an expensive exercise as it requires chartering a plane or helicopter to survey from the air. Funnily enough, these days it is actually much cheaper and quicker if you can survey from space, provided you have the right infrastructure in place.
In many disaster situations one of the first things you have to do is leave the area and get out of the air space. Ironically this is the time you most need to gather intelligence from that area.
Remote satellite imaging is sometimes also called earth observation, because it is technology which allows us to observe what is happening on earth from space using image sensing. In many respects the equipment is little more sophisticated than a digital camera except that employs more bands than the colours used by your digital camera.
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