LOW COST INTEGRATED AIRBORNE MULTISPECTRAL REMOTE SENSING A. ROBERTS, R.L. SHERWOOD and C. COBURN Department of Geography

For most resource management remote sensing applications, overall project costs are of critical importance. Budgets made available to individual researchers seldom permit experiments using an airborne multispectral remote sensing system. The integrated multispectral system described in this paper has a capital cost of approximately $50,000 and can be operated in most light aircraft that have a standard (40cm) camera port. This provides the potential for a low cost airborne RS system that can be made project dedicated. The integrated airborne multispectral remote sensing systems evaluated in this study consisted of: 1. Two motor driven 35mm or 70mm reconnaissance cameras using colour and colour infrared film or one multispectral four band 24cm camera with IR Aerographic film and suitable optical filters. 2. Three optically filtered (including removable internal IR cut off filters), electronically shuttered CCD digital frame cameras integrated into an airborne direct digital recording system using an PC processor with extended RAM (256+mb), a 32bit four channel digitizing card and large capacity portable disk data storage. 3. Two CCD based VIFIS imaging spectrometers providing approximately 10nm bandwidth spectral data across the CCD spectrum (400nm to 1000nm). Several configurations of such a multispectral integrated system was installed in the SFU remote sensing aircraft and is described and evaluated for airborne remote sensing in resource management. The imagery was evaluated for image quality, spatial and spectral feature identification and cost. In general, the system performed well. All targets could be reliably discriminated and quantitative and/or qualitative evaluations were possible for SSC, petroleum slicks, sewage plumes, bottom reflectance and marine vegetation.