Information technology and cartography: The largest Bank of high definition satellite photos of Earth’s surface created

Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre, and Cartography (Rosreestr) creates Russia's largest bank of satellite photographs of high resolution of the Earth’s surface. By the end of 2012, the service plans to publish the photos on its web site more than 5 million square kilometers of the country’s territory – which is many times more than Yandex or Google provide today.

The Order regulating the use of satellite pictures as the basis of state real estate cadastre (OCG) has been signed by Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina.

The photos’ resolution will be 0.5 meters per pixel, which exceeds the quality of the maps in popular services Yandex.Maps and Google Maps.

For citizens and organizations which do not plan to use images for commercial purposes, they will be freely available on the Rosreestr portal, said Sergei Sapelnikov, Director Deputy of Rosreestr.

The largest Internet resources in the Russian market that show pictures of Earth from space are     Yandex and Google. But the territory, which Rosreestr plans to cover by high-resolution photos, is at least 10 times higher than the one covered by these companies.