Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
principal uses of aerial photographs has been to construct and update topographic maps
and produce spatial measurements such as ground distances and terrain elevations. In town
and country planning (such as in the UK), they have also been used in a variety of natural
resource and appraisal surveys, typically providing a contextual backdrop to development
plans or for monitoring land-use change over time. Table 7.1 provides a summary of some
of the traditional uses of aerial photography in planning, based on early work by Stone
(1964) and supplemented by more recent examples. The fact that Stone's work still provides
a good summary of the uses of aerial photography in planning after 40 years indicates the
lack of development in this area. For instance, Chamberlain (1992) provides a summary of
the principal uses of aerial photography by Hertfordshire County Council, UK in the 1990s
and all these relate directly to the different uses in Table 7.1.
Part of the reason for the lack of development in the uses of aerial photography in plan-
ning is a reflection of the cost of obtaining good-quality, up-to-date images. This situation
is changing rapidly, however, with the advent of new and improved sources of digital and
up-to-date aerial photographs from companies such as UK Perspectives, Getmapping and
Cities Revealed in the UK, Pictometry International Corp. in the United States, and more
recently from internet portals such as Google Earth. These are providing new opportunities
for the use of aerial photography in planning teaching and research and also in planning
practice as well as allowing the general public access to high-quality images. This chapter
begins with a brief introduction to the history of aerial photography and an overview of the
technical and conceptual literature. It gives a brief summary of some of the new sources of
aerial photography, such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth. The chapter then dis-
cusses some of the uses, traditional and emerging, of aerial photography in planning-related
property research. First, the use of aerial photography in the construction and maintenance
of property databases from basic building enumeration to property attribute extraction
is examined. Second, the potential use of aerial photography in computer-assisted mass
appraisal (CAMA) is discussed with reference to the British Valuation Office Agency and
local taxation. Third, the use of aerial photography in visualizing residential densities and
its use in increasing residential capacity is explored. Lastly, emerging debates about the use
of high-resolution aerial photographs in extracting information on people and property in
order to inform planning is discussed with reference to the effects of increasing surveillance
on society.
7.1.1 A brief history of aerial photography and planning
The history of aerial photography is closely related to the history of manned flight and
twentieth-century conflict (Paine and Kiser, 2003). The first known aerial photographs
were taken in 1858 by photographer Gaspard-F elix Tournachon from a balloon outside
Paris. The first aerial photograph that is still in existence was taken over Boston in 1860 by
James Wallace Black, also from a balloon. Aerial photographs were also taken using kites
from 1882 onwards with George Lawrence, an early pioneer of this technique, using it to
photograph San Francisco shortly after the 1906 earthquake. The first aerial photographs
taken from an aeroplane were taken near Le Mans, France in 1908, and this quickly became
the dominant method of aerial photography, being substantially developed during the First
World War (Lo, 1976). The Second World War saw rapid development in the technology of
aerial photography and after the war many countries started a programme of collating aerial
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