Name
Ed Bauer
Tell us about yourself
I’m retired former enlisted Navy imagery analyst, spending thirty-eight years on a light table at every position. My last eight years (2003-2011) was supporting the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), using digitized hardcopy imagery from the National Archives and Records Agency (NARA), from WW-II through Vietnam. Our primary responsibility involved looking for air craft crash sites, debris fields, graves, POW camps among other tasks. We had access to commercial satellite imagery and would geo-rectify the period imagery with the commercial, blending the two at different percentages, so as the customer could slide in increments from the old to the new image to see how the terrain as change over time. Currently, I’m involved with supporting AMAG (Asymmetric MIA Accounting Group), who just finished up a recovery operation in the vicinity of Camp Keithley, Mindanao, PI, looking for the graves of servicemen executed and buried in the area by Japanese in 1942. I’m also assisting them with other MIA cases from the Vietnam War with period digitized imagery.
What do you want to learn / contribute
I’d like to learn how to perform change detection between two different aerial images. I use Earth Explorer at the USGS site for accessing coverage. As these area are remote, there are no streets nearby, nor towns, and therefore no street map to upload for comparison. Trying to keep it simple. I’m interested in having the ability to slide from one image to the other, looking for subtle changes on the ground, between the two…in particular identifying disrupted soil that might suggest a human grave site.