Project Objectives
Availability of good software for teaching Remote
Sensing and GIS has always been a problem. Commercial
software, no matter how good a discount is offered,
remains expensive for a developing country, cannot be
distributed to students, and may not be appropriate
for education. Home-grown and university-sourced
software lacks long-term support and the needed
usability and robustness engineering.
The OpenDragon Project was established in the
Department of Computer Engineering of KMUTT in
December of 2004. The primary objective of this
project is to develop, enhance, and maintain a
high-quality, commercial-grade software package for
remote sensing and GIS analysis that can be
distributed free to educational organizations within
Thailand. This package, OpenDragon, is based on the
Version 5 of the commercial Dragon/ips®
software developed and marketed by Goldin-Rudahl
Systems, Inc.
As of 2010, Goldin-Rudahl Systems has agreed that
the Open Dragon software, based on Dragon version 5,
will be open source for non-commercial use. The
software source code should be available on this
server by early 2011.
OpenDragon provides:
- Intuitive, easy-to-use desktop image processing
for the study for remote sensing techniques and
applications;
- Access to optimized source code for the study of
image processing software development
techniques;
- A test bed for students and researchers to
explore novel image processing methods.
An additional goal of this project is to raise
awareness of geoinformatics principles and
applications at KMUTT and particularly within the
Department of Computer Engineering. This increased
awareness is expected to enhance faculty and student
research on geoinformatics topics, to foster the
development of collaborations with other departments
within KMUTT as well as outside organizations,
including educational, government, and
non-governmental organizations, and to raise KMUTT's
profile in the geoinformatics community.
The OpenDragon Project is actively seeking support
from additional sponsors in order to pay ongoing
expenses and to expand the software capabilities.
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