Patent ID: 8260006

Claim:
A method of processing geographic images comprising, with a computer: receiving a first and second geographic asset, wherein each asset comprises an image and geo-location data associated with the image; associating the first asset and second asset with a plurality of tiles, wherein each tile represents a portion of the image of the asset; identifying, in the image portion associated with a tile, aspects of the image that have distinct characteristics compared to the remainder of the image; comparing the identified characteristics in a first tile in the first asset with the identified characteristics in a second tile in the second asset and, for at least one of the identified characteristics, calculating first alignment data based on the position of the characteristics in the first tile and the second tile; receiving a third geographic asset, wherein the image of the third asset corresponds with a portion of the image in the second asset; and associating the third geographic asset with a plurality of tiles, wherein the location of each tile with respect to the image is based on the first alignment data.