medoq

                                The DOQ horizontal positional accuracy and the assurance of that accuracy depend, in part, on the accuracy of the data inputs to the rectification process. These inputs consist of the digital elevation model (DEM),aerotriangulation control and methods, the photo source camera calibration, scanner calibration, and aerial photographs that meet National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) standards. The vertical accuracy of the verified USGS format DEM is equivalent to or better than a USGS level 1 or 2 DEM, with a root mean square error (RMSE) of no greater than 7.0 meters. Field control is acquired by third order class 1 or better survey methods sufficiently spaced to meet National Map Accuracy Standards (NMAS) for 1:12,000-scale products. Aerial cameras have current certification from the USGS, National Mapping Division, Optical Science Laboratory. Test calibration scans are performed on all source photography scanners.
                              

                                The DOQ accuracy depend, in part, on the accuracy of the data inputs to the rectification process. These inputs include digital elevation models (DEM).
                              

                                Elevation data in the form of an ortho-DEM regridded to user-specified intervals and bounds.
                              

                                Panchromatic black and white (or color infra-red)  NAPP or NAPP-like photograph. NAPP photographs are centered on the DOQ coverage area.
                              

                                DOQQs were appended to assemble MEGIS tiled MEDOQs.
                              

                                The production procedures, instrumentation, hardware and software used in the collection of standard USGS DOQs vary depending on systems used at the contract, cooperator or USGS production sites. The majority of DOQ datasets are acquired through government contract. The process step describes, in general, the process used in the production of standard USGS DOQ data sets. The rectification process requires, as input, a user parameter file to control the rectification process, a digital elevation model (DEM1) gridded to user specified bounds, projection, zone, datum and X-Y units, a scanned digital image file (PHOTO1) covering the same area as the DEM, ground X-Y-Z point values (CONTROL_INPUT) and their conjugate photo coordinates in the camera coordinate system, and measurements of the fiducial marks (CAMERA_INPUT) in the digitized image. The camera calibration report (CAMERA_INPUT) provides the focal length of the camera and the distances in millimeters from the camera's optical center to the camera's 8 fiducial marks. These marks define the frame of reference for spatial measurements made from the photograph. Ground control points (CONTROL_INPUT) acquired from ground surveys or developed in aerotriangulation, are third order class 1 or better, and meet National Map Accuracy Standard (NMAS) for 1:12,000-scale. Ground control points are in the Universal Transverse Mercator or the State Plane Coordinate System on NAD83. Horizontal and vertical residuals of aerotriangulated tie-points are equal to or less than 2.5 meters. Standard aerotriangulation passpoint configuration consists of 9 ground control points, one near each corner, one at the center near each side and 1 near the center of the photograph, are used. The conjugate positions of the ground control points on the photograph are measured and recorded in camera coordinates. The raster image file (PHOTO_1) is created by scanning an aerial photograph film diapositive with a precision image scanner. An aperture of approximately 25 to 32 microns is used, with an aperture no greater than 32 microns permitted. Using 1:40,000-scale photographs, a 25-micron scan aperture equates to a ground resolution of 1-meter. The scanner converts the photographic image densities to gray scale values ranging from 0 to 255 for black and white photographs. Scan files with ground resolution less than 1 meter or greater than 1 meter but less than 1.28 meters are resampled to 1 meter. The principal elevation data source (DEM1) are standard DEM datasets from the National Digital Cartographic Data Base (NDCDB). DEMs that meet USGS standards are also produced by contractors to fulfill DOQ production requirements and are subsequently archived in the NDCDB. All DEM data is equivalent to or better than USGS DEM standard level 1. The DEM used in the production of DOQs generally has a 30-meter grid post spacing and possesses a vertical RMSE of 7-meters or less. A DEM covering the extent of the photograph is used for the rectification. The DEM is traversed from user-selected minimum to maximum X-Y values and the DEM X-Y-Z values are used to find pixel coordinates in the digitized photograph using transformations mentioned above. For each raster image cell subdivision, a brightness or gray-scale value is obtained using nearest neighbor, bilinear, or cubic convolution resampling of the scanned image. The pixel processing algorithm is indicated in the header file. An inverse transformation relates the image coordinates referenced to the fiducial coordinate space back to scanner coordinate space. For those areas for which a 7.5-minute DEM is unavailable and relief differences are less than 150 feet, a planar-DEM(slope-plane substitute grid) may be used.
                              

                                Rectification Process: The photo control points and focal length are iteratively fitted to their conjugate ground control points using a single photo space resection equation. From this mathematical fit is obtained a rotation matrix of constants about the three axes of the camera. This rotation matrix can then be used to find the photograph or camera coordinates of any other ground X-Y-Z point. Next a two dimensional fit is made between the measured fiducial marks on the digitized photograph and their conjugate camera coordinates. Transformation constants are developed from the fit and the camera or photo coordinates are used in reverse to find their conjugate pixel coordinates on the digitized photograph.
                              

                                Quality Control: All data is inspected according to a quality control plan. DOQ contractors must meet DOQ standards for attribute accuracy, logical consistency, data completeness and horizontal positional accuracy. During the initial production phase, all rectification inputs and DOQ data sets are inspected for conformance to standards.  After a production source demonstrates high quality, inspections will be made to 10% of delivery lots (40 DOQs per lot). All DOQs are visually inspected for gross positional errors and tested for physical format standards.
                              

                                The Maine Office of GIS used the MrSid Workstation Geospatial Encoder 1.3.1 from Lizardtech, Inc. (http://www.lizardtech.com/index.html),  to compress and mosaic the USGS DOQs. The USGS DOQs were copied to the Maine Office of GIS server and then the four quarter quads (DOQQs) that make up one quad were added into MrSid to compress and mosaic together. All images were compressed using the same tolerances in MrSid: a target compression ratio of 12:1, 5 zoom levels, a target thumbnail of 500 pixels, and a block size of 512. The typical input of the four quarter quads added up to approximately 165MB and the typical MrSid output was approximately 12.5MB per quad. The majority of the images were viewed before the mosaic process was completed so the best order to overlap the images that would result in the least of amount of data loss in overlapping areas could be determined. Due to the time-consuming nature of this image comparison procedure it was not performed on all images. MrSid images were created so that MEGIS could store all of the available images on the MEGIS server and also to provide a manageable data size for distribution from the MEGIS website.
                              

                                The MrSid DOQ image (MEDOQ) for the Monhegan Quad has been updated.  The southern half of the older image was registered incorrectly and we recently received replacement images from USGS.