Recently I attended a very informative lecture entitled Remote Sensing for the Environment hosted by
CAST as part of the
AmericaView Annual Conference. It was a pretty standard overview lecture of remote sensing with topics on the history and development, current application and future directions. What made it important was that
Dr. John R. Jensen, a pioneer in remote sensing applications, presented it. Sure, some historical applications were presented that I was not aware of that were really interesting. For example, during the US Civil War, men would climb into a balloon and rise up to elevation not to far out of reach of surface weaponry. Their goal was to take aerial photographs of enemy troop infrastructure and offensive battle front lines. Not surprisingly, no aerial photographs from the Civil War exist – the photographers where probably all shot out of the balloon. Sometimes ideas that seem perfect are just not thought through with regard to consequences. We (the human race) still do this kind of “blinders on” planning. But it was not so much the past idiotic and overly daring applications that made me wonder. It was the some of the current applications – and more so the current resolutions – of remote sensing today and projected for tomorrow.
Let me start by saying I’m all for remote sensing. I think when used properly it has amazing benefits for many disciplines – environment, geography, geology, archaeology, etc. It’s no small secret that the development of remote sensing is primarily advanced in military applications until it becomes declassified and cost effective for civilian use. That’s just the way it goes and the way it will continue to proceed. But how far is too much? In the lecture Dr. Jensen was discussing satellites that currently have a resolution of 6 inches. At a resolution of 6 inches one could discern what kind of pizza (a large pizza – enough to get at least four data points) someone is eating from space. One part of me says, sweet.. applications in archaeology will really benefit from this high resolution. The other part says, what about privacy? It’s a tough dilemma. Here’s the topper. Currently, along political borders, a specttrophotometric X-ray that uses gamma rays to penetrate and bounce back based on densities of objects in order to create a 3D X-ray model – similar to ground penetrating radar - is often used. Its application along the border is used for the detection of contraband, of course. Certainly this is an applicable application. Currently, this technology is not airborne but as Dr. Jensen mentioned, developing the technology in an aerial capacity is in development - satellite X-ray to see into houses, buildings and under the ground. As I left the lecture, I am torn, confused and concerned. Seeing into the ground can have excellent applications in archaeology, but it can have serious ramifications to privacy. One could also speculate that if this X-ray technology is being used in a declassified manner (openly along borders), what level of classified developments exist that are currently being used in military applications?
Labels: archaeology, lectures, remote sensing, x-ray
