Geosense UK Aerial Photography

25cm resolution areas are shown in blue. More areas in Scotland are becoming available.

Detailed city areas shown in yellow have been captured at 10cm resolution:
Birmingham, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cheltenham, Coventry, Derby, Edinburgh, Exeter, Gloucester, Ipswich, Hull, Leicester, Lincoln, London, Luton, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Northampton, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Portsmouth, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Southend, Sunderland, Swindon, Tyne and Wear, York

New areas to be flown with the digital camera.
Blue - 2005/2005
Green-2006
Orange - 2007

In 1999-2002 Getmapping produced the Millennium Map - the map-accurate 25cm resolution aerial survey of the whole of England and Wales and parts of Scotland with main cities across the UK were captured at 10cm resolution. Scotland is due to be completed by the end of 2006.

The maintenance of the Millennium Map is being undertaken by the Getmapping Partnership (Getmapping, Geosense, Flight Images and SCS) using the state-of-the-art Vexcel Ultracam-D large format digital camera instead of traditional film based cameras.

The Vexcel camera produces a higher quality and cleaner image as there are no scanning artefacts. Shadow penetration is now possible as the data is collected in 12bit rather than 8bit, and in addition to the standard RGB channels there is also a Near Infra Red channel.

Geosense is leading the data processing work and flying has already begun on the second layer. All the imagery is fully orthorectified at a higher resolution of 15cm, with urban areas at 10cm or better, using GPS and NEXTMap Britain DTM.