Sampling Goals

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Sampling Goals

As with satellites, Argus Stations are often installed with a number of potential purposes in mind. Thus we are more often interested in what can and cannot be accomplished with any choice of cameras rather than in selecting cameras for a single specific application. That said, the heart of design is in understanding the sampling characteristics of any installation, particularly the spatial pattern of pixel resolution (the size of the ground footprint of each pixel). Since pixel resolution worsens with distance from the camera, this effectively means that any particular technique can only reasonably be applied within xxx meters of the camera where our goal is to understand what xxx is.

As an example, the estimation of longshore currents through the tracking of foam was designed around a longshore sampling resolution of 0.3 m, a typical size of surf zone foam patches. Thus, the technique might be considered valid out to a range where the alongshore pixel resolution exceeds this value. On the other hand, time exposure maps are likely valid out to resolutions of perhaps 10 m or more. So the same cameras could be used to sample a much larger range. Note that these are usually soft boundaries – a pixel resolution of 0.31 m will still likely give reasonable longshore current results.

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