EXTRACTION OF GEOLOGICAL INFORMATION FOR THE BUNDESWEHR GEOINFORMATION SERVICE (BGIS) USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS

Today’s asymmetric warfare requires a wide variety of quality assured geo-information to provide advisory service for the armed forces. The demand to be deployable worldwide induces the need for worldwide available data. Due to the limitations of availability, especially on data needed on larger scales, it has become necessary to extract information from various remote sensing sources. Procedures of geological mapping therefore are based on the extraction of data from globally available remote sensing products. The operational conditions in the mission areas forces personnel to use basic and approved tools.

At the BGIO a handbook for the extraction of geological information was created in order to standardize information extraction procedures. The handbook offers a toolbox of techniques to create data layers that contain physical-geological spatial information. Concepts to map geological features based upon different satellite imagery are presented for lithological units, geomorphological landforms and tectonic features. Additionally topographic, hydrological and vegetation features are mapped to complement the terrain attributes. Practicable methods focussing on multispectral images are exemplarily demonstrated depending on satellite image characteristics like spatial and radiometric resolution. Process charts have proven to be most advantageous to promote standardized procedures of information extraction.

Approaches to use the obtained information for the evaluation of cross-country movement and mobility analyses in future projects are outlined herein. But the demand for state-of-the-art methods to link data acquisition to algorithms answering user controlled queries is still unsatisfied. For this reason we look forward to implement elements like a digital mapping approach for our terrain analysis to satisfy customer demands.