Sustainable approach of the “fast mapping” technique for developing countries and areas recently affected by war events

The availability of high resolution satellite images (HRSI) is introducing a new challenge in the mapping environment. Imagery coming from high resolution satellites such as QuickBird, Ikonos, Eros-Al or the new Orbview-3, is likely to become in the next years a powerful tool to derive topographic maps as well as a comprehending medium at large scales. Many researches on this topic have stated the usefulness of HRSI to yield cartography in those countries where the production based on traditional methods (aerial photogrammetry) cannot be afforded, particularly for developing countries and areas recently affected by war events. Obviously, the cartographic products that might be obtained using satellites data are different with respect to traditional 3D-numerical maps. Moreover, the pixel size of the current sensors seems to allow map production up to 1: 10,000 scale. In this paper the authors propose a new cartographic product, called "Fast Mapping" (FM), completely derived from spaceborne sensors and discuss the accuracy that can be obtained by this technique. The FM is based on planimetric digital maps, derived from the geometric correction of HRSI using Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) and integrated by a set of vector layers acquired by palm GPS receivers. The peculiarity of this kind of maps is the approach to data collection, which is performed by low-cost and fast techniques. In addition, the transfer process of these technologies from researchers to local operators is really sustainable. A description of the technique is given and some case studies are presented.