China Increases Urban Planning Efficiency

The China Academy of Urban Planning & Design (CAUPD) recently selected ERDAS APOLLO to manage and deliver its massive amounts of vector and raster data. CAUPD is a scientific research institution under the Ministry of Construction of the People's Republic of China.

To conduct its urban and rural planning research, CAUPD requires a vast collection of images displaying urban agglomerations, or large, continuous areas of urban development. This collection consists of terabytes of both raw and processed ALOS and SPOT data. Beijing Digital LandView Company Limited, the authorised ERDAS distributor in China, introduced ERDAS APOLLO to CAUPD.

Beijing Digital LandView Company Limited highlighted key features such as automated data and metadata harvesting and the ability to share information via web services compliant with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. They also showcased ERDAS APOLLO's comprehensive security model, which enables organizations to specify data access based on geospatial and scale constraints defined for users and/or roles.

"Before CAUPD began using ERDAS APOLLO to catalog images, the researchers could only acquire data from the data center personnel, who had to conduct manual searches. That cost time and delayed the development of some research programs," said Dr.Li Ke Lu, Director of the Spatial Technology Department, CAUPD. "After using ERDAS APOLLO to manage our data and metadata, we had no problem sharing the thematic data from coastal Eastern China that we use for urban agglomeration research. Using ERDAS APOLLO, we can work more efficiently and realize the full value of all the images we have."