Douglas Isbell
Headquarters, Washington, DC                 January 24, 1997
(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Lanee Cobb
Stennis Space Center, MS
(Phone: 601/688-3341)

RELEASE: 97-16

NASA REMOTE SENSING HELPS REALTY
COMPANY MAKE HOME BUYING EASIER

    NASA's Commercial Remote Sensing Program (CRSP) at the 
John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) in South Mississippi has 
worked with a Diamondhead, MS, realtor to jointly develop a 
better way for prospective home buyers to find a new house.

    Jon Ritten, owner of Coast Delta Realty, was interested in 
a computerized way of showing buyers many different aspects of 
property without actually having to leave the office. To do 
this, he called on the CRSP at Stennis for its expertise in 
remote sensing. 

    Remote sensing uses sensors that are either ground-based 
or mounted on aircraft and spacecraft to look at the Earth. 
Ground-based remote sensing systems look out over the horizon, 
while air and-space based systems look down on the Earth's 
surface. Pictures or imagery acquired from these systems are 
combined with related information to produce up-to-the-minute 
maps, track weather events, measure terrain, map forests and 
wetlands, find agricultural problems and create databases of 
urban infrastructure. 

    Ritten and the CRSP office developed a very detailed 
digital mapping system of the Diamondhead area, showing 
numerous characteristics of developed and undeveloped 
property. Ritten provided CRSP with the common real estate 
questions and concerns, and NASA used remote sensing to help 
provide the answers.

    "Working with NASA, I thought I would be dealing with 
folks who wouldn't understand what I was trying to do, and I 
certainly wouldn't understand the technology," said Ritten. "I 
was very surprised that our communication and interface was 
very simple. CRSP personnel have taken the technology down to 
a level that, as a layman, I can understand. It's been a very 
easy process for me."

    "The connection between satellite remote sensing and real 
estate is natural," said Richard Campanella, a remote 
sensing/Geographic Information Systems specialist with 
Lockheed Martin at Stennis. "People looking for real estate -- 
prospective home buyers -- become geographers. So an airborne 
or satellite image is a natural way to communicate geographic 
information."

    For the Coast Delta project, CRSP collected remotely 
sensed imagery over Diamondhead, primarily using airborne 
sensors, and put it into a computer mapping system. The 
imagery was then referenced to the geographic location in 
Diamondhead and interpreted by CRSP to identify specific 
geographic information, such as potential flood areas, percent 
of shade on the lot, setback distance between the street and 
the house, visibility from a particular house, areas of 
interest in a neighborhood, and sites of houses, stores, 
developments and retail areas. 

    "I think with the information products this technology 
will offer, it's going to allow the industry to provide more 
services to their clients and perhaps cut down on the 
necessary efforts by the sales representatives to meet the 
needs of their clients," said Cliff Holle, a remote 
sensing/Geographic Information Systems specialist with 
Lockheed Martin. 

    The remote sensing information obtained also has many 
other applications outside of the real estate industry. 
Insurance underwriters, engineering firms, local/municipal 
government, investors and emergency planners can use this same 
information to determine risk, build a road, create a base 
map, site a shopping mall and plan an evacuation route. 

    The CRSP is an element of NASA's Office of Mission to 
Planet Earth, Washington, DC. This long-term, internationally 
coordinated research enterprise is designed to study the Earth 
as a global environmental system, for the benefit of 
scientists, educators, policy decision-makers, commerical 
partners and the general public. 

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