Announcing the Release of SARscape 5.5!
Peg Shippert
We are pleased to announce the release of ENVI® SARscape 5.5, the popular ENVI module that allows users to process and analyze any type of SAR data! We have some dazzling new features that we're sure will improve your ability to get the information you need from SAR data.
Visualization and Analysis Tools
Perhaps the biggest news for ENVI SARscape 5.5 is that the tasks can now be used in the ENVI Modeler, a visual programming tool for creating custom task-based workflows in ENVI. ENVI Modeler combines the power of the ENVI API with a simple and intuitive user interface. It can be used to build workflows without any knowledge of IDL programming. Models can be deployed on the desktop via ENVI and ArcGIS Pro, and in enterprise and cloud environments.
SARscape 5.5 also includes significant improvement to its Interferometric stacking tools. SARscape's Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) capabilities now include discontinuous SBAS, via the ability to control the disconnection percentage during the first and second inversion steps. Incremental Persistent Scatterer analysis is also now possible, saving processing time whenever a new acquisition is added to an existing data stack.
Interferometric tools now include workflows that do not require GCPs. Moreover, interferometric modeling now allows slant range combinations and statistics computation, and can generate reports to help visualize results.
In addition to all of this, SARscape 5.5 adds full integration with ArcGIS Pro via ENVI Py version 1.2. This includes a stand-alone Python API to run any SARscape task, as well as SARscape tasks being available in desktop ArcGIS (ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro).
Data Support
As with each new release of SARscape, SARscape 5.5 adds support for new earth observation satellites and important geospatial data formats. One of the most exciting new additions to data import in SARscape 5.5 is a generic SAR data importer. SARscape will now automatically recognize sensor type and data format for supported spacebourne sensors.
Among the newly supported data products are RISAT-1 products. RISAT-2 is an Indian remote sensing satellite built and operated by the Indian Space Research Organization. Supported RISAT-1 products now include Single Look Complex (slant range) or Multi Look (ground range), and also Level 2 (geocoded) data products.
SARscape 5.5 also adds support for data in Sensor Independent Complex Data or SICD format. In addition, Sensor Independent Derived Data or SIDD files can now be generated. Supported sensors include ALOS-2, CosmoSkymed, RADARSAT-2, Sentinel-1A and -1B, TerraSAR-X, and TandemX.
Additional sensor support that is new in SARscape 5.5 includes support for the Japanese ASNARO-2 and Spanish PAZ-1 X-band sensor products.
The Sentinel-1 support has been improved, including new support for Sentinel-1 Amazon format and improvements to the Sentinel-1 download tool. Those improvements include automatic extraction of zip archives and the ability to use KML and KMZ files to define areas of interest for download,
In addition to new and improved SAR sensor and format support, SARscape 5.5 now has the ability to query and download meteorological data provided by the European Center Medium Weather Forecast (ECMWF) and OpenStreetMap data. SARscape users can then integrate these data with SAR data in ENVI and SARscape for further analysis.
In SARscape 5.5, Automatic Identification System (AIS) marine traffic information can now be imported and compared with detection of ships via SAR data.
General Improvements
In addition to creating flashy new features, the SARscape developers have been hard at work tweaking various every day tools in SARscape. For example, you will notice that workflows now include data import and area selection, and Preferences are clarified and divided into those commonly adjusted by users, and those specific to certain types of data.
We are excited to bring these improvements to you, to enhance your ability to work with SAR data in ENVI SARscape and ENVI.