WASHINGTON — Commercial imaging technology continues to attract companies hoping to find profits in the sale of value-added applications.

Between space-based and aerial sensors there are far more options available today than even just a few years ago for companies that want to produce value-added products, said Charles Mondello, senior vice president of corporate development for Pictometry and chairman of the NASA and American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 10-year industry forecast.

"People are looking at new ways of imaging the Earth and opening up new market segments for imagery," Mondello said. The entertainment industry is eager to use such technology, and TerraTracer Technologies Inc. of West Hollywood, Calif., has developed a business selling film footage derived from satellite imagery, said Jorg Mohnen, the company’s managing director.

TerraTracer, formed in 1999, uses imagery and other geographic data to produce 3-dimensional films. The films have been used to develop graphics for coverage of the Tour de France cycling race and the Olympics, Mohnen said.

TerraTracer has used imagery from Landsat and Spot satellites, but Mohnen said the company got a boost when imagery from high resolution satellites, such as Ikonos and QuickBird, became more widely available.

TerraTracer now offers a version of its software to companies that want to develop footage on their own, Mohnen said. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., became the first buyer of that software April 1.

Denver-based Intermap Technologies Corp. combines Landsat data with aerial radar data in its Starplus product, yielding color data comparable to imagery with 1.25-meter resolution, said Brian Bullock, Intermap’s chief executive officer. Starplus evolved from Intermap’s work with the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, Bullock said.

The company was developing a method to distinguish water from land in the data, and produced a color Landsat product with the resolution of the Landsat data. Intermap then applied the technique to its aerial data, he said.

Intermap is charging $50-$60 per square kilometer for new orders, and around $10 for archived imagery, Bullock said. The company is currently focusing on the environmental market but sees potential in the science, aviation and agriculture communities, he said.

Other companies are focusing on Internet delivery of imagery products rather than on value-added processing for the imagery itself.

Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc.

(ESRI), based in Redlands, Calif., has been offering such a service since July, said Jonathan Spinney, the company’s industry manager for location-based services. ESRI does not sell directly to end users, but rather to resellers, who buy blocks of transactions, he said. A typical block is 100,000 requests for $1,250 but Spinney would not release revenue figures for the service.

Users can build value-added products via the World Wide Web without having to buy their own hardware, software or data, Spinney said. The service is targeted at multiple markets, such as utilities, agriculture and emergency services personnel who can tap into the service using handheld wireless devices, he said.

Iunctus Geomatics Corp. of Lethbridge, Alberta, also plans to enter this market and signed a contract April 9 with Telus Geomatics, which provides geographical information services via the Internet, said Brian Johnson, president of Iunctus.

Telus Geomatics, of Edmonton, Alberta, is a subsidiary of Canadian telephone company Telus Communications Inc. and will deliver Iunctus’ TerraEngine service via Telus Communications’ telephone infrastructure, Johnson said.

"We are doing more than renting space from Telus," Johnson said. "We are partnering in terms of capability to deliver large volumes of data."

Iunctus, which has exclusive distribution rights in Canada for imagery and products from French Spot satellites, plans to have most of Alberta imaged at 2.5 meters resolution by the Spot 5 satellite this summer, Johnson said. Users will pay a subscription fee to access the service, and the system could be operational for agriculture clients by May, he said.

If the system proves successful, Iunctus and Telus hope to expand into the United States through Verizon, a shareholder in Telus, Johnson said.