Kuwait: Image Mapping - Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics - page 32

The result: an image that was designed for the purposes of a total planning
and surveillance regime, then used to plan the U.S. counterinvasion of Kuwait,
and then reused as a preservation and reconstruction blueprint. In principle, every
uprooted tree and every occupied or destroyed building could be restored accord -
ing to the data in the image map.
An image is not necessarily a map. The Intergraph image of Kuwait City is
an example of “image mapping,” a technical term that describes the overlay and
integration of remote-sensing imagery with a geospatial database. According to
Intergraph, the “Kuwait City image was created with data collected by two com -
mercial satellite systems, Landsat and SPOT . . . . Spectral (color) information of
the 30-meter ground resolution Landsat data was digitally combined with the
spatial (textural) information of the 10-meter resolution of SPOT panchromatic
data.” The new composite image is treated as a georeferenced grid of pixels—
picture elements. Onto the pixels are superimposed vector files, scaled lines gener-
ated on an x - y coordinate system that contains the lines, symbols, and labels of
conventional maps. “Cartographic annotations, symbology, and marginalia were
added in vector form using the raster image as a co-registered backdrop. Fea -
tures and labels were extracted from a GIS database originally created for analy -
sis and resource management.” 17 This gives the image a scale and orientation and
allows it to be coordinated with information in city and military databases or with
other maps. The layers of the image map can become visible or invisible to reveal
or conceal transportation, communications, power, or water and sewer network
maps, for instance.
And so it was not a big jump from “resource management” to war fighting.
Interviewed in a promotional Intergraph publication just after the war, one com -
pany executive traced a direct line from “one of the most complete GIS projects
ever developed” to the tactical conduct of the war. He noted that the Kuwaiti
National Database, nicknamed “Kudams,” contained “13.8 million features repre -
senting topographic, property, and utility data, in a remarkable level of detail” and
underlined that “Kudams provided vital intelligence information throughout the
time Kuwait was occupied. The system was instrumental in putting together opera-
tional plans for liberating the country.” 18
At the start of the post-Cold War, had any 5,800 square miles been more inten -
sively mapped than these? These maps and mapping programs facilitated govern -
ing the country, delimiting its uncertain borders, fighting a war in and over it—and
starting all over again. By the early morning of January 17, 1991, when the coalition
air attack on Iraq and occupied Kuwait began, more than one line had already been
drawn in these sands. The Gulf War was a conflict over just where and how to
draw them.