O Canada!

In July of 2009, we headed north.  Way North.  So far North, the sun never set.  The Bathurst Caribou Herd makes an annual migration to their calving grounds on the tundra near the Bathurst Inlet.  Our participation was twofold: to determine if Infrared cameras could assist in locating the Caribou, and to evaluate the role that advanced mapping technology could play in estimating the herd size.  ARS not only has digital video recording capabilities, but the video recordings contain frame-accurate information on the position and orientation of the camera and the ability to compute the exact latitude, longitude, and altitude of every pixel on the screen.  Post-flight, we were able to fast forward, pause, and rewind the video.  The location of caribou could be marked by simply clicking on the animal in the video, and the results exported to a shapefile.  Unfortunately, while the results from the official survey indicated the herd size has further declined, we were able to learn some valuable lessons.

pdf_downloadView the ENR White Paper

 

 

In the summer of 2010, we performed flight tests to determine the applicability of ARS to quickly and accurately determine the location of "hot spots" - areas that remain after a forest fire that have the potential to flare up again.  The pilot's comments were:

With your sytem we were able to stay at 1000', maintain 25 to 30 knots and the camera operator would have to point the gimble down to at least 65  degree's before marking the spots. The results were well within the needed 10 meters accuracy. The time needed to mark 7 hot spots was approximatly 30 to 40 seconds  as compared to the regular way of 5 minutes per spot times 7 = 35 minutes. All the time well above the deadmans curve.

The savings in helicopter times would more than offset the added costs of the ARS in my opinion and allowing the marking of spots by not missing  some or counting a spot twice is a money saver also.

A growing number of Canadian Law Enforcement agencies are turning to our ARS mapping system as well.  We provide a turn-key solution and offer nationwide high resolution terrain, topographic maps, and road data.  Working with your GIS department, we will also load parcel data at no cost, and can provide customized solutions based on your needs.