The german camera evaluation project - results from the geometry group

The so-called German camera evaluation project was initiated by the German society of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation (DGPF) in order to allow for comprehensive empirical test on photogrammetric digital airborne camera systems. During this test, the digital camera systems DMC, Ultracam-X, ADS40 (2nd generation), JAS-150, Quattro DigiCAM and AIC-x1 were flown in the test site Vaihingen/Enz in summer 2008. In addition, RMK analogue images and ALS50 LiDAR data were recorded for comparison, while reference measurements on the ground were made available as well. Parts of the test field were also covered from hyper-spectral sensor flights, namely the AISA+ and ROSIS system. After data collection all this material was prepared, documented and distributed to more than 30 institutions which participated in the evaluation and formed the project network of expertise. This evaluation phase included topics like the analysis of geometric accuracy and sensor calibration, the radiometric performance including on-site radiometric calibration and multi-spectral land classifications. Additionally, the performance of photogrammetric surface model generation and the potential of manual stereo plotting from digital images were investigated. Within this paper, the major findings from the geometric evaluations, namely sensor orientation and height model generation are presented