Aviation and Aerial Photography

The division has one main department which is the aviation and aerial photography department besides two auxiliary departments which are the digital mapping department and the ground survey department. The two auxiliary departments are intended to support the research and service project activites of the main department plus providing mapping and surveying services to NARSS projects. The division is obligated to perform aerial photography and aerial scanning of regions of interest using the sheet film camera, the digital camera and the lidar scanner currently available in NARSS. It is also obligated to perform aerial scanning using scientific scanning sensors of interest to national research programs. The division is responsible for the management of the aerial photography and aerial scanning projects including the flight mission planning, flight data processing, lidar data processing, digital image date processing and aerial photography sheet film production follow up and delivery. The division has the capability of conducting photogramery analysis to produce thematic and surveying maps from the aerial sheet film, the preprocessed digital lidar aerial scanning data and the digital aerial camera and satellite digital image data. Besides, the division has the capability to conduct ground-truth surveying measurements and analysis.