Digitized map captures campus with clarity

As a result of work by a team of civil engineers and environmental scientists, the campus now can be seen from a bird’s eye view with the accuracy of a conventional map.

Faculty, staff and students in the Campus Map Project have produced computerized data derived from aerial photographs, including an exquisitely detailed image of the entire campus created from photos taken in May 1999.

This digital image has been made into a colorful poster map that shows the campus in such detail that individual houses and pedestrian routes can be picked out. The 20-by-30-inch poster, which shows a 2-by-3-mile area from Eagle Heights to the Kohl Center, is available for $14 from the State Cartographer’s Office in Science Hall.

The data include computerized models of the ground surface and buildings over which a very detailed set of images can be digitally draped, says Richard Fayram of the Division of Facilities, Planning and Management, one of the project’s leaders.

Faculty, staff and students involved in the project employed state-of-the-art methods that in the future may be used by professionals who manage municipal infrastructure.

“We did this [project] in anticipation of changes in industry, and the latest tools function in a high-end desktop computing environment,” says Fayram.

Professor Frank Scarpace, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Institute for Environmental Studies, wrote software called OrthoMapper to simplify the process of converting ordinary scanned aerial photographs into digital orthophotographs.

Students processed the photographs using a digital land surface model to compute and then remove natural distortions caused by the effects of terrain as seen from the airborne camera. The end product is a set of images, each having the geometric accuracy of a map, that can be merged together to cover a larger area. The orthophotos can be used to make accurate measurements at ground level.

Scarpace and Fayram, along with colleagues professor Alan Vonderohe and associate professor David Mezera in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, helped design the project, secured campus funding and industry donations, and oversaw student involvement.

Students have found that their work on this project has greatly advanced their technical proficiency, Fayram says.

On the map poster, 79 separate orthophotos are merged into a seamless mosaic in which sidewalks, individual trees and vehicles in parking lots are clearly visible.

“The poster shows the campus like no other product, and the seams between images are invisible,” says assistant state cartographer Bob Gurda. “Aerial photographs have been instrumental in mapping and analysis for decades, and digital orthophotos for almost 10 years, but this kind of highly detailed merged image raises the usefulness to a new level.”

Even more detail than what the poster offers is available to those using the Campus Map Project’s digital images, which resolve some objects as small as 6 inches across. This detail becomes important for people who manage and plan the buildings, utilities, paved areas and open space of an area the size of the campus.

The Division of Facilities, Planning and Management will use the new orthophoto image and related data sets to manage construction and renovation projects.

Other products of the project will also aid campus planners. For example, the project has created three-dimensional digital versions of all campus structures, such as Camp Randall Stadium, which make campus planning more efficient and effective. Individual planning proposals can be inserted into this virtual model of the campus.

The project, based in the Environmental Remote Sensing Center, includes participants from the Division of Facilities, Planning and Management; the College of Engineering; and the Institute for Environmental Studies. The project has created an additional $1 million in funding for research as a direct result of its accomplishments.

“The scope and scale of this project is far beyond anything anyone has done here in an academic environment before,” Fayram says.

Last November, the State Cartographer’s Office contributed to the layout, design and publishing of the campus map in poster form. To view a lower- resolution poster image, visit: http://www.geography.wisc.edu/sco.

Viewing of the full resolution image is forthcoming.