GEO-Photo Oblique Aerial Photography

As I was looking back at where EMMU had come from and where EMMU Aerial is today, it was obvious we had come a long way and learned a lot along the way, mostly through our emergency mobile mapping and oblique aerial photography systems.

From the early days of Emergency Mobile Mapping Unit or EMMU in 2000 where we provided a true mobile emergency GIS response capability with our GIS quick response trailer to support  wildland firefighters, first responders and search and rescue professionals.  To the GEO-Photo System, with georeferenced oblique aerial photography, providing invaluable, fast and accurate geographical information and imagery for various government agencies.  All well before UAS or “drones” were even considered to be a viable tool of such information, the GEO-Photo system had proven itself.

The GEO-Photo system primarily use was for handheld vertical and oblique photography, captured from existing program aircraft for quick turn geo-tagged intelligence photographs.  For many emergency, police, military and intelligence gathering operations, these crisp high-resolution photographs with embedded GPS coordinates and associated GIS data was required to conduct disaster response, mission planning and mission analysis for emergency operations.

The GEO-Photo system was composed of a hand held high resolution digital camera, GPS and gyro stabilizer.  All with the capability to record GPS latitude and longitude, elevation and direction data within a high resolution digital still photograph.  The camera system was capable of storing several hundred photographs on compact flash memory.  But most importantly, this system was portable and not mounted to any aircraft, capable of moving from aircraft to aircraft in the hands of the operator.  Today EMMU Aerial has drones for this mission, but the legacy and capabilities of the GEO-Photo system are still around.