In a talk I gave at Duke today, I highlighted some previous work I’ve done on developing a sampling frame using high-resolution satellite imagery.
Hi-res satellite imagery is great, but very expensive. One possible alternative was featured on several major news outlets a few weeks ago: a helium balloon rigged with a camera and GPS for $150.
But the really exciting idea that I talked about today was the HawkEye — “The World’s First Truly Portable Remote Control Aerial Photography Platform.”
For less than $400, I will be stuffing one of these into the overhead compartment on my next trip.
Check out this video of a test flight:
HawkEye First Flights from Cris Benton on Vimeo.
Wow – that was fast! (time between your talk & your blog post)
Thanks for the great talk today! I admire your powerpoint skills and am thinking about referencing the Hippocrates quote in a paper I’m writing about health determinants!
this is an amazing piece of equipment and I can see where it could come in handy. What specific uses will you make of it. Since I was not in your talk, I am not certain.
I think a device like this could be used to take aerial photographs of a survey enumeration area that does not have a good sampling frame. Then you can use the georeferenced image to enumerate all of the households in your area of interest and randomly select households for surveys.
Thanks! The folks at Apple would appreciate a slight correction: Keynote not PowerPoint. Try it out if you have a mac. I think its better.