(reproduced with permission)
ITC is a research institute in the Netherlands which has specialised on remote sensing. John van Genderen has led a research team which has shown how airborne remote ensing can help locate minefields. You can see summaries of their results in the PDF documents linked to this page. The documents are local copies of the originals which were prepared in 1999. For more recent work, send E-mail to ITC. See their web site at:
Experiments in Mozambique and Belgium have shown that igh resolution aerial photos of work sites that can be viewed in stereo, with resolution of 2mm, provide lots of useful information (i.e. can see trip wires if visible from above).
Example of photo interpretation from Mameme, Mozambique
Availability: Cameras and film are relatively easily available either through defence establishments or commercial survey firms. The cost is claimed to be about US$10,000 per square kilometre (Reference: http://www.itc.nl/ags/research/posters/main.htm)
General information on airborne detection of minefields (postergeneral.pdf, postergeneral2.pdf 130 kb, 98 kb)
Airborne detection of minefields by observing changes in terrain and vegetation. (posterChange.pdf, 748 kb)
Airborn detection of minefields - preliminary results from Buzi, Mozambique showing how vegetation differences and tiny shadows of old fence posts can reveal minefields. (posterbuzi.pdf, 163 kb)
Airborn detection of minefields - preliminary results from Mameme and Bandue, Mozambique showing how aerial photos can reveal features associated with military activity - old trenches, foxholes and even UXO lying on the ground. (postermamban.pdf, 228 kb)
Airborn detection of minefields - preliminary results from Songoi, Mozambique again showing different kinds of photo interpretation applied to the problem of locating minefields. (posterSongo.pdf, 228kb)
Abstracts from remote sensing conference 1999 (abstracts.pdf, 488 kb)
Images: Some aerial photograph images are supplied on the CD-ROM of the web site.
CIR_2448.jpg - airborne photographic image in infra-red showing trip wires (available on CD of web site only - 17 Mbytes!)
overview.jpg - airborne image of test site in Belgium showing mine locations - not all were found by aerial inspection
