On-the-fly server-based aerial imagery management system

Aerial images are valuable products when dealing with both geospatial and geotemporal analysis. Nowadays, they are widely used for many different purposes and by an extensive public, including private companies, official administrations and individual users. Although in the past few years there has been an increasing interest in showing all kinds of geographical information on the World Wide Web, access to aerial imagery and its dissemination are still difficult and lack flexibility. This paper introduces an aerial imagery management system based on client–server principles, operated so as to allow users quick and efficient queries, processing and management of huge sets of photogrammetric imagery stored on raster servers. It is a novel product that is ready to provide image-based cartographic data available in public and private digital warehouses, facilitating all the required visualisations and queries, as well as geometric and radiometric processing on the fly. This paper shows the design, system architecture and various functionalities of the system in a real-life scenario.