Geocoding Field Survey Images for Oil Spill and Emergency Response
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Geocoding Field Survey Images for Oil Spill and Emergency Response Ministry of Environment Gordon Oliphant Chelsea Rieu Geocoding Field Survey Images for Oil Spill and Emergency Response Overview: Geocoding is the process of adding geographical identification metadata, notably location coordinates such as latitude and longitude, to various media formats such as images or video clips. This paper discusses the need and recommended method of geocoding field survey images for environmental emergency response, oil spill assessment work and for regular Environmental Protection Officers (EPO's) work. The recommendations made should also be strongly considered by other ministries such as forestry, mining and highways where geocoding is deemed important. Parks, compliance and ecosystems information have already expressed strong interest in this technology for litigation, trail location and inventory purposes. It is recommend that if widespread support of this idea occurs that the Information Management Branch (IMB) becomes involved to spearhead any corporate planning required. An example of this would be making the geocoding software available under shared license under Citrix and/or ArcGIS shared licensing. Easy to use, relatively inexpensive technology that makes geocoding of every field image possible is now available. The main product that this paper presents is called GPS-Photo Link® Standard software by a company named GeoSpatial Experts®. http://www.geospatialexperts.com/productstd.html GPS-Photo Links has been found to be the leading software product in all areas. It is the best value given the features available and it is the most widely endorsed of all the products investigated. The software is endorsed by the U.S. National Spill Control School as well as many others. http://www.geospatialexperts.com/news.html In addition, a fully functional ruggedized and waterproof GPS camera unit is available at about 20% of the cost of the early models that first appeared about five or six years ago. Competitor products with comparable features are listed in table format in Appendix 2. This paper started about a week ago with the idea to address inadequacies found while working on recent SCAT duties. Talking to a few individuals lead to a very fast and favourable response about the same need for the geocoding of images and videos to occur in a wide scope of other areas. We recommend that the idea be widely distributed & if interest warrants the scope of distribution then the initiative be led by IMB (Integrated Management Branch). Unmanaged laptops are recommended for all field use and this is deemed to be a requirement from a user perspective. In many areas such as inventories, geocoding images should be written into the standards of data collected. The main cost savings areas will be seen in any processing and recording time which will no longer be required and major litigation cost savings due to increased accuracy and virtually no processing time when compared to the current manual method. Fully documented photos will be available on demand for discovery purposes. The Present Situation: Individual photo images taken during oil spill assessment and at environmental emergency response sites are presently not geocoded or geopositioned unless it is done manually. That fact alone creates a situation where images are very often not available for distribution until a long time after a response person or unit is finished their work. Even then, the general area or the unit section is known but the exact location the photo was taken within the defined zone remains unknown. This situation needs to be addressed to enable staff to do on-time, safe and efficient response and reporting of environmental emergency response situations. This paper discusses two main solutions as options: The first option is aimed directly at using existing hardware for Environmental Emergency Response and SCAT Oil Spill duties. The second option is the ideal geocoding solution for full time use for Environmental Emergency Response officers and EPO's. Both options and the recommended approach are discussed later in the document. Essentially the deciding factors should be whether to implement just the software if an existing GPS unit and digital camera is already in place or to implement the full Ricoh 500SE GPS camera. The latter is recommended for users that will be using them on a daily basis such as in compliance work. The full feature Ricoh 500SE GPS camera option is also the option recommended as a replacement for currently used GPS units as they go out of date. Again, ministries such as forests may want to use the Trimble link software option instead due to more exacting precision and accuracy requirements. Interest in this type of technology is high at this time because major GPS technological advances have occurred so quickly and because previous pricing barriers were recently removed. In short, users have wanted this functionality for a long time but the monetary cost of early technology outweighed the benefits. Further, the early products were not as robust as features now offered at about 20% of the cost five to six years ago. Discussion Specific to Oil Spills and Emergency Response: The present situation of handling field images for emergency response and oil spill situations is grossly inadequate to meet user requirements. This is especially frustrating to the people doing the field work and incident command duties. The only method that some images are geocoded at this time is by the operational person recording the UTM coordinate of the position where the photo was taken in their field book after determining that information with a portable GPS unit. Not every image location is recorded - just the single ones of special concern. Normally there is no processing or embedding the photos with any geocoded data at all at this time. The pictures are turned in and are known to be in a certain section, predefined segment or zone but no other information is available to someone who might be viewing the image in hand for the first time. Normally, the UTM coordinates remain with the person recording the notes unless a copy is turned over with the images. For emergency situations, it is not unusual to shoot 300 to 400 photos a day. If litigation occurs, a single day of manually geocoding that many photos takes many hours and even then, accuracy is often in question. GPS-Photo Link takes approximately 1 second for each photo to be processed and hundreds can be processed at the same time. Discussion on General Features: This section applies to the Standard version GPS-Photo Links software including that used by the Ricoh 500SE GPS camera. Specialized software for use with Trimble GPS units is also available but is beyond the scope of this discussion. GPS-Photo Link Software Main Features: General Description: GPS –Photo Link software can bring together the information from almost any digital camera and GPS unit. Garmin, Trimble and Magellan GPS units are especially recommended. The software downloads both the images and the GPS data. Next it synchronises the two and creates an output file of the user's choice as either simple watermarked photos, html web pages with associated overview maps, ESRI shape files for use in ARCGis software, or GoogleEarth files. Anyone viewing the photos from that point on will see all of this information on each image as watermarks. Custom logos such as Ministry logos can be displayed in addition to the location and time information. Full feature software is available at a cost of $229 USD per transferable copy. The Time Synching Process Unlike other products available the standard edition GPS-Photo Link by GeoSpatial Experts does not require a specialized camera. For most users who have access to a GPS and a digital camera, the only expense will be a software license. The operator is able to use any digital camera that records the date and time for each photo. The program only requires that the camera and the GPS unit are time synched. After the photos and track log has been uploaded to the program, GPS- Photo Link matches the photos to the point where the picture was taken on the GPS’s track log using the time stamps embedded in the photos. The software program allows automatically downloads location information from GPS receiver, including track logs and waypoints. Either the track logs or waypoints can be used to geolocate the photos. This is an important feature as it means that the user does not have to make a waypoint for each photo. In other words, a picture taken at time X will be placed at spot Y because both the GPS and the camera know when the photo was taken, and the GPS “knows” where it was at time X by using the GPS track. All Garmin, Trimble and Magellan GPS receivers are directly supported. The Ricoh 500SE camera is a special combined single unit GPS camera that comes with GPS-Photo Link standard software and can record the direction that the camera is pointing (azimuth) at the time the photo was taken. This camera is presented separately in Appendix 1. This is the unit that is recommended for users that will be in the field a high percentage of the time. We are recommending that this particular camera and software become the standard when ever it becomes necessary to upgrade GPS units. The exception would be special units that require accuracy less than one metre. In those case the high end Trimble or Garmin GPS units should be used in conjunction with the same camera & software. Watermarking/Photo Labelling/Editing Camera photos are uploaded directly to a folder on the computer ensuring that the original photos are not modified.