Photo: COWI A/S

Qatar National Aerial Mapping 2008 

With the Qatar National Aerial Mapping 2008 project COWI has won one of the most prestigious tenders launched in the Middle East.
Besides the acquisition of Vexcel images and ground control points, COWI generates a large, highly sophisticated 3D city model of the urban areas of Doha, which is automatically textured using oblique aerial images acquired by COWI in a separate flight mission.


Satellite Imagery, Orthophoto, Digital Terrain Model and Vector MappingBesides the flight mission, we are responsible for the acquisition of the Ground Control Points. A Vexcel UltraCam-X is used for the capturing of aerial images for the production of an orthophoto with 10cm resolution as well as a photogram- metrically derived Digital Terrain Model for the inhabited areas covering approximately 650sqkm. For the whole country of Qatar, Satellite imagery is provided together with the Joint Venture Partner Space Imaging Middle East.

Photo: COWI A/S


Oblique images, 3D city model and True-OrthophotoOblique images with an average resolution of 8cm are captured for the urban areas using COWI's oblique aerial image system. Besides the four oblique cameras, this system also contains a high-resolution Nadir camera that acquires stereo images (55/75 overlap). The oblique images are used to automatically texture the detailed 3D model that is semi-automatically derived from the Vexcel stereo images using COWI’s powerful and in-house developed software tools based on MicroStation.
The 3D vector model is also used for the generation of a True-Orthophoto of the urban areas.


Joint Venture with Space Imaging Middle EastThe Qatar National Aerial Mapping 2008 project is a joint project between COWI Mapping & Geodata and Space Imaging Middle East (SIME). COWI is responsible for the aerial data acquisition, measurement of Ground Control Points and the 3D city model.


SIME is producing the AT, DTM Orthophoto and the vector map update.