Very high spatial resolution earth observation systems are becoming available in both the active and the passive sensor fields: Quickbird, Worldview, TerraSAR-X, Cosmo Skymed, Pleiades, etc.
Although spatial resolution is catching the attention of many end users, there are other dimensions where resolution is increasing and allowing the access of new kinds of information. These dimensions are the spectral one and the temporal one.
The spectral dimension is usually limited to the visible plus the near infrared, but more and more systems are extending these capabilities to a superspectral (<20 bands) and hyperspectral sampling. One can also make the analogy between the increase of spectral bands in optical systems and SAR systems with increased polarimetric capabilities.
In the temporal dimension, thanks to constellations or to specific orbital configurations, revisit times of 1 day or even less are going to be available. Therefore, the monitoring of quickly evolving phenomena will be possible.
These new sensors have been developed in order to fulfill user requirements in terms of applications. However, new applications and uses will be imagined by remote sensing scientists as it has been the case in the past (the use of ERS-1 for SAR interferometry, the water color products derived from SPOT-Vegetation, etc.).
Beyond the use of a given sensor or system for applications for which it has not be designed, the great amount of newly available data with high resolution in different dimensions (spatial, spectral, temporal) allows us to imagine new synergies between different types of data.
Finally, the availability of spatial and geographical information is steadily increasing. From professional and commercial data bases to free (Google Earth, Virtual Earth, SRTM) an even open ones (Open Street Map, Geo Names), many sources of high quality data are available to users for fusion and synergy with remote sensed data.
On Monday 8th September I will be givin a talk about this subject in the International Summer School on Very High Remote Sensing in Grenoble, France.
The talk will give a detailed overview of Very High Resolution Remote Sensing in its 3 dimensions (spatial, temporal, spectral). New sensors and upcoming missions and systems will be presented. The new challenges in terms of image processing, data synergies, potential applications and end-users expectations will be analyzed.
