Abstract for presentation at The 13th Australasian Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Conference

Land cover data can be used in a variety of applications. One of these applications is as an input into the generation of clutter data. Clutter data (land cover) mapping in conjunction with Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) are used by telecommunication companies to model signal loss from cellular phone towers and in the network planning process. The New Zealand Land Cover Database 2 (LCDB2), along with detailed capture of urban areas from high resolution orthophotography, was used to create clutter data for all of New Zealand. LCDB2 was used as the primary data set for clutter generation. LCDB2 is a national land cover coverage generated from medium resolution satellite imagery (Landsat 7 ETM +). This database comprises 43 land cover classes. Each of the LCDB2 classes was assigned to one of the 13 clutter classes defined by the client. Vector clutter data was converted to raster format and supplied at both 20m and 50m cell sizes. DTM data for all of New Zealand was obtained at 25m resolution and subsequently resampled to 20m and 50m cell sizes. The resampled DTM was combined with higher resolution DTMs where available over major urban areas. The project was undertaken using the ESRI suite of products; ArcGIS 9.1, ArcSDE 9.1, Arc Info Workstation and GRID. Multi user editing was undertaken in an enterprise geodatabase. The project identified issues with integrating data from different sources and specifications as well as managing a number of concurrent GIS projects, with different database compression requirements, within the Oracle based ArcSDE system. Utilising the ArcGIS image catalog function was useful in accessing large numbers of orthophotographs. The use of land cover data derived from satellite imagery in conjunction with urban specification orthophotography was an effective way of achieving client requirements for an up to date national clutter data set.