Introduction

To find out the distribution of the forest resources in Taiwan, the government has used the aerial survey technology for a long time. Since our establishment, the Aerial Survey and Remote Sensing Branch, Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, Ministry of Agriculture(ASRSB,FANCA) has been advocated to building a complete spatial database about Taiwan by photogrammetry and remote sensing data. By planning flight lines, surveying control points, carrying out aerial photographing missions, and conducting the follow-up tasks such as stereoplotting as well as compiling, we have been providing aerial data for various demanders for decades.

Along with the advance of the information technology, we also entered the era of digitalization and purchased two advanced digital aerial cameras. In 2010, we also finished the scanning of all the photos taken by traditional aerial cameras. By this way, we have digitalized all the precious data of the past decades. At the same time, the advance of the information technology also opens a new era for us in term of providing and applying aerial image and related spatial data. Through the newly established ASRSB,FANCA Taiwan Image Services, Supplier, and System, general users can inquire our orthophotos by just using normal browsers. We can foresee that after introducing the Cloud Computing Technologies, users can obtain our aerial image and related spatial data more easily and quickly so that these data can be applied to different purposes: national land planning, agriculture and forestry management, disaster prevention and rescue, urban planning, resources investigation, environment monitoring, economic development, as well as academic research, etc.

To catch up with the fast progressing of related software and hardware technologies, we will keep improving ourselves. Under our core value “Specializing in aerial survey technologies and enriching national geographic information,” we will keep introducing new aerial survey equipment and technologies to enhance our abilities in collecting remote sensing data. By this way we can provide more precise data in a shorter time so that related organizations can make the most correct policies in the shortest time.