Benefits of Medium Resolution Satellite Imagery Mosaics in GIS

Hong Kong Planning Department

The Hong Kong Planning Department was established with a mission to make Hong Kong a better place to live and work. They are in charge of the policy portfolios of planning, land use, buildings and urban renewal in Hong Kong. In addition, they are responsible for the territorial development strategies. Their goal is to provide a broad planning framework to guide future development and provision of strategic infrastructures in Hong Kong.

In the past, the HK Planning Department had overlooked the proper use of land, the construction and buildings, and processes of urban renewal in Hong Kong. Therefore, they needed to come up with efficient solutions in terms of urban planning.

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Up-to-date satellite imagery for GIS operations

Satellite imagery data are key components for urban planning. The Hong Kong Planning Department developed a comprehensive web-based GIS (Geographic Information System) project to assist planners and engineers in all areas of urban and infrastructure planning.

To reach their different objectives, the Hong Kong Planning Department needed to analyze and explore not only their local environment but also their surrounding region which covers the whole of Southern China. In other words, they needed to provide the best imagery basemap for geographical reference to their engineers and planners.

The project was to use a 10-meter resolution imagery mosaic covering Southern China. The imagery would be used for visualization through a web-based GIS system aimed at all offices and departments within the Hong Kong Government.

The challenge was to base their planning on an imagery mosaic that would be detailed enough to showcase their whole region of interest. Furthermore, they had set a number of key features to which the product had to conform, i.e.up-to-date data, homogeneous mosaic, and natural color processing.

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