26,000 Ground Control Points in a Commercial Archive

CompassData, a worldwide provider of high-quality ground control points (GCPs) for GIS, photogrammetric and remote sensing applications, has announced that its archive of commercial GCPs now exceeds 26,000 points. The archived GCPs have been collected in 100 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

CompassData makes the GCP data and metadata available for viewing and direct download in a reduced-accuracy format from its website to enable clients to review points and license details before ordering the final data in the accuracy level required. 

Over the past 20 years, CompassData has developed standardised methods of collecting and processing GPS ground control that ensure every point is globally consistent regardless of where it was captured, said Hayden Howard, CompassData vice president. Every GCP meets or surpasses the company’s rigorous standards for quality and accuracy.

Woman-owned

Established in 2003 as a woman-owned small business, CompassData specialises in collecting spatially accurate data for geospatial applications. The CompassData archive is one of the largest commercially available databases of photo-identifiable GCPs in the world available off the shelf for immediate delivery and consistent quality to five accuracy levels as a product offering. CompassData also performs custom ground control collection for clients, usually capturing and delivering points of guaranteed quality anywhere in the world within two to four weeks of order placement.

Used extensively to orthorectify or correct aerial, satellite and UAS imagery as well as Lidar data, CompassData GCPs are also utilised to verify the accuracy of imagery, Lidar and GIS datasets. Remote sensing satellite operators also use GCPs to calibrate newly deployed sensors.

CompassData routinely provides archived and new GCPs to gas and electric utilities, energy exploration companies, government agencies, geospatial product vendors, and telecommunications organisations. Each GCP is processed to CompassData accuracy specifications and delivered with accompanying metadata and station diagram describing how it was acquired.

The standard delivery format is WGS84, but the company offers optional deliveries in any datum, projection and epoch required by the client, said Hayden Howard. Their GCP output format ingests easily into the client’s geospatial workflow so the points can be used immediately, she added.

Unclassified

CompassData’s archived GCPs are especially appealing to defence and intelligence organisations because the GCPs are globally consistent and meet defined standards, yet they are unclassified. This means the GCPs can be freely shared along with commercial imagery among coalition partners. Also important, CompassData can transform the points into future epochs to support present and planned missions anywhere on Earth.

CompassData maintains multiple in-house teams of highly trained field data collection crews that are supplemented worldwide by 30 international business partners with identical GPS surveying capabilities. In 2013 alone, CompassData teams collected GCPs in 71 countries. Crews can be dispatched for custom point collection anywhere in as little as 48 hours at premium rates. GCP accuracy and quality are guaranteed to meet the products accuracy specification or CompassData performs a re-collect at no charge.