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Aerofilms Limited
Established in 1919, Aerofilms is believed to be the world's oldest commercial aerial photographic company. Over the years the company has built up an unrivalled commercial archive of oblique and vertical photography amounting to over 2.25 million images. New vertical and oblique photography is captured every year maintaining Aerofilms and group partner Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited position as one of the UK's leading suppliers of aerial imagery and mapping solutions.
Vertical photography
Aerofilms, recognised for both its experience and expertise, captures most of the vertical aerial photography used in the United Kingdom for mapping, engineering design, land use planning, data collection and for corporate databases and GIS. Such projects include Channel Tunnel Rail Link, Environment Agency flood plain mapping and beach monitoring, Royal Parks grounds maintenance mapping and Ordnance Survey rural revision programme. However, perhaps the most famous photography captured and produced by Aerofilms is the imagery for the BBC EastEnders title sequence, which is seen by millions worldwide every week.
The company has a fleet of aircraft with on board GPS receivers and Forward Motion Compensation (FMC) cameras to ensure that high quality colour and black & white or infra-red photography is captured to specification. Aerofilms vertical archive dates from the 1940's and comprises of county and regional data sets in both black and white and colour. This collection is being constantly updated each year at various scales and is available in both hard copy and digital format. Full details of the imagery held in the archive can be viewed shortly on the Internet at www.aerofilms.com or www.ukperspectives.com.
Ortho-photography
Recently Aerofilms and its group partner Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited has embarked on a speculative project with NRSC under the joint venture UK Perspectives to acquire 1:10,000 scale aerial photography of the UK. Branded MAPS® (Millennium Aerial Photographic Survey) the project aims to produce the first accurate digital photographic map at the turn of the Millennium.
Utilising the very best in scanning technology and military derived software, Maps® will be produced in 3 dimensions to follow the contours of the ground and will provide the user with unparalleled mapping accuracy in a real world environment to 25-cm ground resolution.
Over 65% of England has already been captured in 1999 with the remaining areas of England, Wales and Scotland programmed to be captured in 2000/01.
Oblique photography
The oblique archive comprises of approximately 1.3 million images dating back to 1919. The collection has been described as a major National Heritage resource providing an irreplaceable record of the changing face of Great Britain in the 20th Century. Themes covered include the rural, urban and industrial environment including areas of historic, archaeological and social interest. Other miscellaneous subjects include aircraft, trains, industry, bridges, shipping and sports stadiums.
Aerofilms also has a tremendous collection of historic shots of many European cities, photographs of the Middle East, Far East, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and America including New York in the 1950's.
Approximately 25,000 shots are added to the oblique collection every year and include both residential and commercial properties, sites of historic interest and other topical properties or landscape features such as the London Eye and Millennium Dome.
For commercial companies, oblique photography is ideal for monitoring all phases of the construction process from the initial planning stage to the completed project. It also provides a powerful selling tool, dynamically capturing any commercial or residential property for brochures, reports, newspapers and other publications.
LIDAR
Aeroscan® is the laser profiling service from Aerofilms and group partner Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited providing accurate and affordable means of gathering 3-dimensional co-ordinates of the ground surface to produce Digital Terrain Models (DTMs).
Aeroscan® using the TopEye® laser profiler is ideal for capturing both linear features and block cover, including city models for building height data, planning, infra-structure development, flood plain mapping, transmission line surveillance, roads and railways and volumetric analysis.
Thermal
Aerotherm® is the surveying service from Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited introducing the Daedulus AADS 1230 Airborne Thermal Line Scanner. Aerotherm® surveying services will acquire, process and interpret thermographic and aerial photography for energy efficiency investigations, land use analysis, environmental pollution and other resource studies.
Photogrammetry
Group partner Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited uses stereo aerial photography and sophisticated mapping instruments to produce project specific digital map databases aimed at GIS and land information management. Such databases have provided engineers, local authorities and national mapping agencies in the UK and European Union with detailed information for highway and railway design, grounds maintenance management, base mapping, land use analysis and site development.
Simmons Mapping (UK) Limited
5 West Street
Axbridge
Somerset
BS26 1AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1934 732122
Fax: +44 (0) 1934 732938
Email: mapping@simmonsmap.com
Web: http://www.simmonsmap.com
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