Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Encyclopedia

Remote sensing software

Type of software application

A remote sensing software is a software application that processes remote sensing data. Remote sensing applications are similar to graphics software, but they enable generating geographic information from satellite and airborne sensor data. Remote sensing applications read specialized file formats that contain sensor image data, georeferencing information, and sensor metadata. Some of the more popular remote sensing file formats include: GeoTIFF, NITF, JPEG 2000, ECW (file format), MrSID, HDF, and NetCDF.

Remote sensing applications perform many features including:

  • Change Detection, Determining the changes from images taken at different times of the same area
  • Orthorectification, Warping an image to its location on the earth
  • Spectral Analysis, For example, using non-visible parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to determine whether a forest is healthy
  • Image Classification, Categorizing pixels based upon reflectance into different land cover classes (e.g. Supervised classification, Unsupervised classification and Object Oriented classification)

Many remote sensing applications are built using common remote sensing toolkits.

01Examples of remote sensing software

Watch videos about Remote sensing softwareExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Remote sensing software, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.