Near real time airborne monitoring system for disaster and traffic applications

A near real time airborne monitoring system for monitoring of natural disasters, mass events, and large traffic disasters was developed in the last years at the German Aerospace Center (DLR). This system consists of an optical wide-angle camera system (3K system), a SAR sensor, an optical and microwave data downlink, an onboard processing unit and ground processing station with online data transmission to the DLR traffic and disaster portals. The development of the near real time processing chain from the data acquisition to the ground station is still a very challenging task. In this paper, an overview of all relevant parts of the airborne optical mapping system is given and selected system processes are addressed and described in more detail. The experiences made in the flight campaigns of the last years are summarized with focus on the image processing part, e.g. reached accuracies of georeferencing and status of the traffic processors.