View/Open - ARAN

a selected study area. This is possible using existing systems but falls outside of
what could reasonably be achieved with the available resources for the study. The
main purpose of the study is to determine whether the methodology being
suggested is applicable and whether useful data can be returned from this type of
study. The degree of success indicates the fesability of tailoring an application.
The benefits from developing the already well researched methods of analyzing
imagery; in terms of aggregating the pixels and deriving statistical data from a
selected tile of aerial photography would be limited. This is because there is
already a vast body of knowledge dealing with the subject available. In particular I
am referring to work such as ImageTool, which, again written in C, was
developed in California and is open source. It (along with several other open
source image processing projects) effectively interprets imagery in terms of its
spectral content. As I suggested earlier, one of the most important aspects of
viewing and studying the surface of the earth remotely is the way it is projected.
That is to project it into a format which can give valuable information to the user
and this is where a large part of this study will focus. The study takes a captured
and referenced coordinate grouping (set of data points) and uses these to analyze
sections of the earth. These coordinate groupings are definite points along fixed
boundaries which form physical barriers in terms of walls, streams, buildings and
roads. These could probably be better explained in terms of a bull in a field. In
general terms, any polygon which would prevent the bull from escaping forms a
parcel, which is then analyzed. This means that the study areas are bounded by a
series of fixed vectors/ polylines which are unlikely to deviate over time, allowing
the suggested algorithm to be run over successive years of data capture. With a
standard mean and control key for spectral values it should be possible to gain an
insight into changes in land use in the specific semi-urban areas looked at the
study.
The study areas could possibly be extended to rural areas over time. The reason
why the study does not extend to these areas is that it would have to account for a
much larger study area and less well defined boundaries. This would probably
only be effectively done using tried and tested values derived from more fixed (ie.
no fuzzy data/ hazy boundaries where pixels gradiate and physical features such as
man made fences and walls are not present) polygons.
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