Wisconsin Geospatial News

New WROC publication answers questions on statewide ortho product

The Wisconsin Regional Orthophotography Consortium (WROC) recently published a new “FAQ” describing the delivery specifications for a statewide orthoimagery product expected to be available during the summer of 2011.

In 2010, a significant number of local governments in Wisconsin contracted with the team of Ayres Associates and Aerometric to acquire high-resolution orthoimagery through WROC.  As part of the project, state and federal agencies partnered with local governments and raised a total of $1.1 million to create a statewide, 18”-resolution product.

Importantly, the entire 18″ dataset (nearly 2 terabytes!) will be in the public domain.  The WisconsinView project at UW-Madison has agreed to be the primary distributor for users interested in downloading individual image tiles.  The FAQ also lists contacts for organizations requiring large regional subsets, or the entire statewide dataset.

According to the FAQ, some of the key specifications include:

Spatial resolution       18″
Season                      Spring 2010 “leaf off”
File format                 Uncompressed 3-band GeoTIFF
Tiling scheme             USGS Quarter Quadrangle
Coordinate system     Wisconsin Transverse Mercator (NAD83/91)

This statewide product should be viewed as exciting for several reasons.  Although the USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) has covered the entire state with color imagery in recent years, the statewide WROC product will be different in that it is higher resolution (18″ vs. 1-meter) and flown leaf-off during the spring.  In addition, the project represents the culmination of several years of work to develop a successful partnership between state, federal, and local government agencies.