ABSTRACT

Remote sensing satellites are playing very important roles in diverse earth observation fields. However, long revisit period, high cost and dense cloud cover have been the main limitations of satellite remote sensing for a long time. This paper introduces the novel volunteered passenger aircraft remote sensing (VPARS) concept, which can partly overcome these problems. By obtaining aerial imaging data from passengers using a portable smartphone on a passenger aircraft, it has various advantages including low cost, high revisit, dense coverage, and partial anti-cloud, which can well complement conventional remote sensing data. This paper examines the concept of VPARS and give general data processing framework of VPARS. Several cases were given to validate this processing approach. Two preliminary applications on land cover classification and economic activity monitoring validate the applicability of the VPARS data. Furthermore, we examine the issues about data maintenance, potential applications, limitations and challenges. We conclude the VPARS can benefit both scientific and industrial communities who rely on remote sensing data.

摘要

遥感卫星在各种地球观测领域中发挥着非常重要的作用。但是，长期以来，重访周期长，成本高，云量大已成为卫星遥感的主要局限性。本文介绍了新颖的自愿客机遥感（VPARS）概念，可以部分克服这些问题。通过使用客机上的便携式智能手机从乘客那里获取航空影像数据，它具有多种优势，包括低成本，高访问量，密集覆盖以及部分防云，可以很好地补充传统的遥感数据。本文研究了VPARS的概念，并给出了VPARS的通用数据处理框架。给出了几种情况来验证这种处理方法。土地覆盖分类和经济活动监测的两个初步应用程序验证了VPARS数据的适用性。此外，我们研究了有关数据维护，潜在应用，局限性和挑战的问题。我们得出结论，VPARS可以使依赖遥感数据的科学界和工业界受益。