The Beginning

So, to start the process off, we need to collect imagery of Seattle. Ideally, this imagery will be fairly recent, and have data in 4 bands of the spectrum (Red, Blue, Green, and Infrared). The reason we want all 4 bands, as opposed to just 3, is because the infrared band works exceptionally well in differentiating between objects because in that range of the spectrum, objects tends to reflect energy quite differently. Fortunately, since I am a UW student, I have access to the entire UW map collection, which is quite considerable. They had a 2009 4 band collection of imagery, so I downloaded the tiles for Seattle. And off we go!

False Color Infrared Image of part of Seattle

If you've never seen an infrared image, I put an example of one up. I simply replaced the red colors in the image with infrared, which colors the infrared band so you can see it. I'm doing all this in a program called Spring, developed by the Brazilian government, and is free for all to use!