Real-time Distribution of an Airborne Situational Picture into Command and Control Systems

Abstract

The Modular Aerial Camera System (MACS) has been developed, built and operated for more than a decade at the Institute of Optical Sensor Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR, Berlin). It is a highly flexible system which is adapted to a wide range of carrier systems like Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), helicopters or piloted aircrafts. It is used for a variety of applications like mapping of environmental changes, 3D-reconstruction and urban mapping. One of the main goals of the system is to provide fast and reliable georeferenced information and situational awareness for civil security applications. In this paper we present the most recent developments of MACS, enabling the integration of georeferenced image mosaics in real-time into command and control (C2) systems, GIS-software and mobile devices for first responders. The use of satellite communication systems allows the worldwide use of MACS even in destroyed environments without telecommunication services. The georeferenced image mosaics are disseminated to end users worldwide via web- map services. The developments are illustrated along several use cases including forest-fire and flooding. The transfer of selected scientific developments and technologies to operational use and integration into C2 systems is done with commercial partners as part of the Helmholtz Innovation Lab OPTSAL. The workflow has successfully been certified to be integrated into a Web Map Service standard protocol, so the MACS-data can be shared in GIS systems worldwide. For disaster relief situations we demonstrated a workflow for integration and distribution of our live-map to all teams via the United Nations (UN) International Search And Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) coordination management system. Further developments include the use of onboard-classification to extract relevant information and reduce the amount of data to be transferred.