An open source tool for geospatial image exploitation

A free, multi-platform advanced raster imagery tool (OpenEV) has been developed to facilitate interactive analysis and exploitation of geospatial data. OpenEV was written using a combination of Python, C, and GTK, and uses OpenGL®. The components of OpenEV are a library which can be used to build custom tools, and an example application which is a viewing tool made possible using the library. The viewing tool supports basic display and image manipulation, as well as an extensible command shell for more specialized operations. The viewer rapidly displays very large images (over 500 MB) and can manage multiple layers of vector data and single- or multi-channel raster data. Images may be real or complex, and can be viewed in either sensor geometry or georeferenced space. Basic tools for pan, zoom, region select, point marking, and printing are provided. The viewer also allows 3-D interactive perspective viewing, with on-the-fly registration of the elevation data and imagery. Hardware acceleration, when available, enhances the performance of continuous zoom, on-the-fly projection, and texture mapping. The underlying Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is used to ingest various file formats, including CEOS, TIFF, JPEG, flat raster, and ENVISAT. The command shell provides access to a powerful programming and scripting language (Python) which supports custom extensions and research tool development. This paper describes the structure and current capabilities of OpenEV, as well as future goals.