Cape County Assessor's Office planning aerial photography project

If you see a small, low-flying aircraft circling Cape Girardeau County for several days next spring, smile ... it could be taking your picture.

The Cape Girardeau County Commission on Thursday authorized County Assessor Bob Adams to obtain bids to have aerial photographs taken of every square foot of the county’s 586 square miles (which comes out to more than 16.3 billion square feet).

Only one company, EagleView Technologies out of Rochester, New York, is expected to bid on the project. The county has worked with EagleView on three other aerial mapping projects since 2009.

The aerial images will help the assessor’s field employees work remotely from the office or their homes as they work on mapping and property assessment projects.

“It helps us with our field reviews,” Adams said. “We’re asked by the state to do a complete review every two years and with staffing and funding the way it is, it can take more than a two-year cycle to complete the review.”

Aerial photos will be combined with maps of property lines.

“This allows us to really compare from one year to another and help us find changes in properties,” Adams said. “We’ve found changes to several properties in the past by doing this. It’s very beneficial.”

Next spring’s photography flights will probably be scheduled in March, Adams said, when there are fewer leaves on trees to obstruct ground views and the position of the sun will produce fewer shadows than at other times of the year.

According to Adams, EagleView is the only aerial photography service in the nation that not only provides images of whatever is directly below the aircraft, but also “oblique” images generated by four cameras mounted on various angles allowing for 360-degree views of any property.

“It will take about three days as they fly on a north, south, east, west grid at an altitude of about 3,000 feet producing high definition images,” he explained. “You can zero in so tight that you can read the name of a Frisbee.”

The project has an estimated price tag of $278,000. The cost, Adams said, is well worth it in terms of manpower savings and mapping accuracy.

“We’d do it more often if we could afford it,” he said. “We save up for this.”

A unique feature of the county’s agreement with EagleView, Adams said, is the company will provide “emergency” photography if necessary.

“If we have a tornado come through the county or another natural disaster, they guarantee they’ll fly our disaster area within 24 hours and within 72 hours we’ll have complete imagery in our hands,” he said. “We can do damage assessment from that imagery and that can help speed up the recovery process for the public.”

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