GeoEye-1 will fulfill the order of Rosreestr for 1.3 billion rubles

In August, the Habré discussed the initiative of Rosreestr to create a publicly available free online database of satellite images of the entire territory of Russia (the resolution of images of settlements is no worse than 0.5 m).

In early November, the results of an open tender were announced, which was predictably won by ScanEx , the official distributor of GeoEye in Russia and the CIS, for the lack of competition. In addition to this satellite , almost no one else can take pictures with a resolution of 0.5 m. Various Russian government agencies, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, use GeoEye services. In addition to better quality, American satellite images are cheaper than Russian ones.

According to the terms of the ScanEx contract with Rosreestr, satellite images over the entire territory of Russia - 17 million km ² - will be freely available until the end of 2012.

Territory Type	Map scale	Resolution of satellite images (no worse)	Update (at least)
Territory of settlements	1: 5,000	0.5 m	Once every five years
The territory abroad of settlements with a high population density, with a high percentage (more than 70% of the area) of agricultural land or characterized by the small contour of such land; lands of industry and other special purposes	1:10 000	0.5 m	Once every five years
Steppe, semi-desert, foothill territory abroad of settlements with low population density or lack of permanent population	1:25 000	1,5 m	Once every ten years
Mountainous areas with low population density or lack of permanent population; forest land	1:50 000	2.5 m	Once every ten years
Territories of Siberia, the Far East and the Far North (forest-tundra, tundra) with low population density or lack of permanent population	1: 100 000	2.5 m	Once every ten years

Today, in the Vatutinki complex near Moscow, the Earth from Space conference opened , where Rosreestr and Scaneks presented their project to the public. GeoEye CEO and President Matthew O'Connell also came here.

The work on the project is carried out in two stages. At the first stage (until mid-December 2011), GeoEye-1 archived images will be processed on the territory of 5 million km ² for 2009-2011. Apparently, the ScanEx company already has the pictures. Rosreestr will buy these pictures for 600 million rubles, that is, at a price several times lower than the market value of fresh pictures.

The budget of the first stage is 600 million rubles, the total budget of the project is 1.3 billion rubles. In any case, the cost of the images is much lower than the market (according to various estimates, fresh images with a resolution of 0.5 m are sold at a price of $ 10 to $ 20-27 per 1 km ² ).

In the second stage will be created:

• electronic archive of satellite images of the territory of 17 million km ² (for comparison, satellite maps on Yandex cover only 813 thousand km ² );
• base of orthorectified satellite images and archival orthophotomaps;
• multiscale map on the territory of about 5 million km ² , created from cartographic materials available at the federal fund of the scales 1: 1 000 000, 1: 100 000, 1:50 000, 1:25 000 and 1:10 000 to create cadastral maps of Rosreestr.

According to the terms of the contract, the use of satellite imagery GeoEye-1 for 2009-2011 and a new satellite imagery are allowed as starting materials. At the same time, the spatial resolution of the panchromatic channels of satellite imagery should be no worse than 0.5 m, and the accuracy of positioning on the CE90 earth surface should be no lower than 6.5 m. In addition, space imagery should be carried out in a snowless period; cloud cover should not exceed 15% for the inter-settlement territory and 5% - for settlements within the development boundaries.