Geosense Historical Aerial Photography

Geosense offer a unique ‘search and process’ service using our contacts from around the world to locate imagery of your area of interest in national and international libraries and archiving facilities. All imagery is supplied ortho or georectified, map accurate, seamless and in a format ready for your GIS or CAD system.

South Africa
Geosense has produced for the Cape Metropolitan Council a seamless mosaic of orthorectified black and white historical aerial photography of the Metropolitan Area, flown between 1935-1943. The mosaic will be used to assist the Council in verifying structures and buildings that are older than 60 years, which, under the 1999 National Heritage Resources Act, require a permit before any proposed structural change can take place. Prior to this digital archive becoming available, the method for determining the Heritage rating was to carry out each survey on foot. The historical aerial photography, has, therefore, significantly helped in reducing the time for permits to be issued and in turn greatly reduced costs.
The aerial photography will be kept as a digital historic archive to be used in other applications, including: for educational and reference purposes; visually verifying land claims from pre-Apartheid days; monitoring change both urban and environmental; and instigating effective conservation methods by mapping the unique indigenous Cape Floral Kingdom, which has dramatically declined over the last 50 years due to the spread of alien vegetation. The dataset is also very useful for smaller district Towns where records have been lost, destroyed or are non-existent.
United Kingdom
Geosense has access to aerial photographs dating back to the 1940s, including RAF, USAF and Luftwaffe data, both vertical and oblique, with resolutions up to 12.5cm in either black and white or colour. Aerial photography has already been used to: monitor the natural rate and impact of coastal erosion; investigate environmental changes caused by man-made structures; delineate areas of contaminated land; allocate land for regeneration; aid town planning; locate sites requiring nature and habitat conservation; preserve and protect sites of archaeological and scientific interest; and verify boundary claims.