Fully automatic generation of geoinformation products with chinese zy‐3 satellite imagery

The advantages of continuously and soundly obtaining large multidimensional, multiscale and multitemporal observation datasets from satellite remote sensing make it indispensable in building a national spatial data infrastructure. This paper introduces the ZY‐3 satellite developed in China and discusses a fully automatic data‐processing system to generate geoinformation products, such as digital elevation models (DEMs) and digital orthophotomaps (DOMs), based on ZY‐3 imagery. The key technologies of automatic geoinformation product generation, including strip image‐based bundle adjustment together with creating DEMs and DOMs, are illustrated. The accuracies of the georeferencing and automatically generated geoinformation products are also discussed. This automatic data‐processing system is shown to provide a good foundation for near real‐time derivation of such geoinformation products and for the promotion and application of Chinese domestic satellites.