Quality Control and Assurance in an Ifsar Mapping Environment

Airborne Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (IFSAR) is emerging as a highly cost-effective threedimensional (3D) mapping technology. Digital elevation models and orthorectified radar imagery are core products commercially manufactured by Intermap Technologies with its airborne IFSAR based STAR technology. The application list of STAR based mapping products is growing continuously due to the appropriateness of and the ever-increasing client confidence towards the product quality. The success of a data product manufacturer pivots on its capability of producing quality data for intended uses. Quality control and assurance is a necessity of ensuring the data quality in a consistent manner facilitated by a rigorous quality management system, which is especially true for many nation-wide mapping missions. The objective of this paper is to describe an organizational effort of quality control and assurance. Quality is defined in the context of Intermap’s STAR based mapping products. Design and implementation of quality control and quality assurance at various manufacturing stages are discussed in detail. A summary and prospect is given at the end.