D-ASM Mapping Software

For the D-ASM, the Forest Service selected the consumer off-the-shelf (COTS) mapping software that most closely met the system requirements, and the software provider agreed to make necessary modifications to their product to meet our sketchmapping needs.

With this software, feature type keys (point, line, and polygon) are used to display the aircraft’s position on the on-screen map, and a user-defined keypad is used to attribute features. The observer selects the type of feature to be sketched, sketches the feature on the screen, and then assigns attributes to the feature using the keypad. The screen remains frozen while the feature is being sketched and is updated after the enter key is pressed. When the aircraft icon advances to the edge of the window, the map display updates and moves the aircraft icon to the center of the window. Upon completion of the sketchmapping mission, a translation step converts the sketched features into ESRI shapefiles. These shapefiles are then copied to an external disk for transfer to a GIS.

Aerial surveyors often want to display large shapefiles over their raster map data; these shapefiles may be the previous seasons’ survey data, administration boundaries, or section lines. Fire managers may want to see the previous day’s fire perimeters shown on top of raster aerial imagery or digitized raster maps. The software can display many different types of geospatial data as the background map and thus can accommodate a variety of user preferences.

The software provider continues to enhance the software by developing modifications such as editing of polygons, multiple user-defined keypad sets for attributing features, display of feature attributes, and editing of feature attributes.