TABLE OF CONTENTS Christoph H. Gierull and Chuck Livingstone
The transportation infrastructure of today's world has been readily observable from space as road systems, seaports and airports since the early days of earth observation satellites. As the spatial resolution of spaceborne sensors becomes finer, increased infrastructure detail can be observed. The construction, maintenance, management and evolution of transportation routes and facilities are major financial investments for all levels of government in all nations. The data used for infrastructure planning, design and operation has been based on observations of traffic flow and local spot tests. Up to the present time, there has been no economically feasible way to provide velocity and density measurements of traffic from remote sensing systems.
The fundamental technology needed to map moving vehicles is, in fact, well known. Due to the urgent information requirements and high risks associated with military activities, extensive research into motion measurement radars (for example Reference 1) has resulted in the development of operational airborne facilities for detecting and mapping the movement of vehicles on the earth's surface (ground moving target indication or GMTI radars). The Joint-STARS radar ground surveillance aircraft [2,3], developed in the United States in the late 1980s, is a system of this type. Although Joint-STARS has been shown to be effective in its military role, the effective coverage area is...
