Use of High Resolution Images on the Aerodrome Protection Zones Mapping and Managing

Abstract

The disordered growth of large cities makes problems on urban infrastructure reaching the airports neighborhoods, as
obstacles that affect the safety of aircrafts, passengers and people living in these places. In addition to airport safety,
the intense human movement along the Airports Obstacle Limitation Surfaces, affects the necessary socio-economic
development of the region. The standardization of aeronautical operations in the World making them more safety, led to
the International CivilAviation Organization (ICAO) to publish normative documents regulating aviation activities. The
measures and surveys of obstacles must have high accuracy and are usually performed with classical topographic
methods requiring high costs. The use of high resolution images (pixel equal or less than 1 m) is presented as an
alternative to solve the problem of managing obstacles, that provides the necessary accuracy, in a lowest time, and
providing more efficiency also to the continuous monitoring of areas of irregular deployments around airports. In this
paper two IKONOS II images, dated 2001 and 2008 were used to survey the occupation of the a area surrounding the
Salgado Filho Airport in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. The proposed methodology evaluated the efficiency of these
images to the understanding of the Aerodrome Protection Zones, its relationship with the surrounding urban areas, the
location and the identification of obstacles. This study showed that high-resolution images are effective for analyzing
the obstacles with an estimated error of 2,66 m in the coordinates of the orthorectified image. This parameter is considered tolerable for the most of obstacles limit surfaces.