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Advanced Search Options Help

GeoFUSE Advanced Search Options are designed for use by GIS professionals who wish to specify exact search criteria to query the GeoEye Image Catalog and receive results in industry-standard formats such as ESRI® Shapefile, KMZ, KML, comma separated values (CSV) and HTML. The functionality in Advanced Search Options provides users with the ability to search the GeoEye Image Catalog by uploading files (ESRI® shapefiles, Google Earth™ files or GML documents) to automatically load the geometry of a specific area of interest (AOI). Additional search options allow a user to query the GeoEye Image catalog by manually entering their desired geometry, i.e., to search by buffered coordinate point, bounding box, buffered coordinate point list and polygon point list.

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If this help documentation does not answer your questions, additional assistance can be obtained by sending an e-mail to GeoFUSE Support.

Getting Started

The following is a step-by-step tutorial for using GeoFUSE Advanced Search Options.

Advanced Search Options Home Page

Search By Uploading a File


A user can generate geometries to search the catalog by uploading your own files. The Advanced Search application allows users to upload complex search geometries contained in ESRI® Shapefiles, KML files and GML files. These files must be placed in a compressed archive with the .zip extension. The application will only accept one zip archive at a time but each zip file can contain many shapefiles, kml files, and gml files in any combination.

Start the Upload File process by clicking the link “By Uploading File” on the Advanced Search Options home page.

The following Advanced Search Options file upload page will open:

The server places some limitations on the complexity of geometries that are uploaded to the server. Any zip archive that is uploaded can contain up to a maximum of 500 features. So, for example a user could upload a zip archive with 500 files, each containing one geometry, one file containing 500 geometries, or anything in between. Feature geometries are not valid if their area encompasses more than 50,000 sqkm and each feature can have no more than 200 vertices. Also, be aware that geometries containing more than 31 vertices may be converted to a bounding box and therefore the intricacies of very complex geometries will not be retained but the resulting bounding box geometry will still encompass the same area represented by the complex polygon.

Click browse and navigate to a compressed folder that contains one or more of these file types: KML, KMZ, GML, zipped ESRI® shapefile.



Note: At anytime you can return to the previous page or the Advanced Search Options home page by clicking one of the links under the instructions.

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Search by Geometry Query

From the Advanced Search Optons home page select Search Type "By Geometry Query".

There are four options for entering coordinate strings: By Buffered Point, By Bounding Box, By a Point Coordinate List, and By a Polygon Coordinate list. In all cases Latitude and Longitude values can be entered in decimal degrees or degree minute second format, and in the case of degree minute second the following formats are recognized:

-30 27 30.123
-30° 27' 30.1230"
30d27m30.123s


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Search by Buffered Point Coordinate

The first option for searching by geometry is a coordinate point with a buffer radius. The latitude and longitude values will create a center point from which a buffered square will be created as the search geometry. For example, a buffer of 3.5 kilometers will create square search geometry with an area of 49 square kilometers. The minimum buffer radius is 3.5 kilometers. Since search geometries greater than 50,000 square kilometers are not allowed the maximum buffer has been set to 111 kilometers. Once values have been entered for the three fields click the “Process Point Buffer” button.

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Search by Bounding Box Coordinates

In the bounding box search dialog, enter latitudes for the northernmost and southernmost points in your area of interest along with longitudes for the easternmost and westernmost points. When all four values have been entered, click the “Process Bounding Box” button.

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Search by Point Coordinate List

This option is similar to searching “By Buffered Point Coordinate” but this option allows you to enter many pairs of longitude, latitude values. Separate longitude and latitude values with a comma ( , ) and separate each pair with a return or newline. Do not use spaces. Once at least one Longitude, Latitude pair has been entered, click the “Process Point List” button.

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Search by Polygon Coordinate List

The polygon coordinate list and a series of longitude, latitude coordinate pairs that represent the vertices of a polygon or linear ring. All polygon coordinate lists must start and end with the same coordinate pair in order to ‘close’ the polygon. Enter the list of coordinate pairs with longitude, latitude values separated by a comma ( , ) and each pair separated by a return or newline. Once the polygon coordinate list has been entered click the “Process Polygon Points” button.

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Interacting with Catalog Search Results

The result page is the same for all processing types including uploading a file or searching by any geometry string. The results page has two sections. On the top are the attribute filters and on the bottom is the search geometries table. The workflow for interacting with results is to adjust the attribute filter settings and then click the links in the results table to download or explore the footprints that were found in the area of interest and that match the attribute filter settings.

Each row in the results table represents a geometry that was extracted from one of the uploaded file or was entered in a coordinate string.

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Screen Layout

Following is a diagram of the screen layout of the Catalog Search Results include callouts detailing the screen elements.

  1. Date Controls
    TUse the Date controls to set the start and end date range. You must click a day on the calendar to close the calendar date control. Only footprints that were captured within this date range will be returned.

  2. Cloud Cover Control
    Set the maximum allowable cloud cover percentage either by entering a value directly in the text box or using the slider to set the value. Only footprints that have a cloud cover percentage less than or equal to the value in the text box will be returned.

  3. Collection Vehicle Selection
    Select the desired collection vehicle. You can select GeoEye-1, IKONOS-2, OrbView-3 or Any. Selecting "Any" will return imagery from all three of GeoEye's high resolution satellite imagery sources. Selecting a particular collection vehicle will return imagery only from the selected collection vehicle.

  4. Permalink
    Clicking the link that says “Permalink” will link to the GeoFUSE online maps application where it will show footprint results for the area of interest in that row. The filter settings will be applied to the maps application.

  5. Shapefile - Download ESRI® Shapefile
    Click the SHP link will download the footprint results for the given area of interest in ESRI® Shapefile format in a zipfile that will contain the area of interest geometry, the matching footprint geometries and a map document that symbolizes these features. The footprint shapefile will only contain features that match the attribute filters.

  6. Google Earth™ KML - Download Google Earth™ Document
    Clicking the KML link will download a zipped Google Earth™ KML file(KMZ)containing footprints that match the area of interest geometry and attribute filters. This KMZ file resembles the KMZ results that are generated by the GeoFUSE Earth application.

  7. Comma Separated Values (CSV) - Download Comma Separated Values
    Clicking CSV will download a file with a list of footprint results and their attributes separated by commas. The footprints listed in this file will match the area of interest and attribute filter settings.

  8. Formatted HTML - Download/Open HTML Document
    Clicking the HTML link will open a new browser window with an HTML formatted report showing an overview map and a list of the footprints matching the area of interest and attribute filter settings.

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