De Pléiades à Pléiades Neo : Enjeux et opportunités. L'éxperience d'un producteur de données

Abstract

GEOFIT has 50 years’ experience in geospatial information processing and is involved in fields such as photogrammetry
and remote sensing. GEOFIT Montpellier employs over 50 people in France to produce two- and three-dimensional carto-
graphic data from aerial and satellite acquisitions. As a subcontractor, GEOFIT Montpellier has been awarded a contract
since 2016 by the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) to produce 50,000-scale maps and 5,000-scale city maps :
the Geomaps program, following on the Topobase program of 2005-2015. Meanwhile, GEOFIT teams have visualized, pro-
cessed, adjusted, calibrated and sampled millions of km² of Pleiades pan-sharpened images at 50 cm resolution. These
images were used to train artificial intelligence models, with the aim of producing internal support layers for vector pro-
duction. Several dozen photo-interpreters “panning” and interpreting multiple landscapes, urban, peri-urban, rural, more
or less anthropized, had to produce vector databases in line with military requirements. Since 2023, these same teams
of data scientists, engineers, image analysts and photo-interpreters have been evolving their profession by applying their
experience to the new images produced by Pléiades Neo. What are the advantages and disadvantages ? Is this a simple
evolution or a ‘game changer’ ? Are the new channels useful ? What about vector standards ? Is AI capable of making
Pleiades Neo inferences from Pleiades training ? GEOFIT addressed these questions at the Pléiades Néo Seminar held in
Toulouse (France) on October 5, 2023.