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SpatialNews Press Release
NJIT Global Positioning System Aiding Twin Tower Recovery
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NEWARK, Sept. 26-New Jersey Institute of Technology is playing a key role in
the Twin Tower's recovery effort, helping the government monitor and map the
disaster site.
A civil engineering unit here is helping to position planes hovering above
the wreckage. The planes are taking three-dimensional digital aerial images
and maps, which recovery crews then use to assess the damage and orchestrate
the clean up.
An antenna at NJIT's Global Positioning System (GPS) Center tracks the
satellites and downloads the data into a computer at the university. The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hourly taps into the
computers and uses the data to track planes and record precise images.
Joshua Greenfeld, Ph.D., associate professor of civil and environmental
engineering at NJIT, who manages the GPS Center, said for the past two years
the Center has helped the government monitor the earth's crust for
earthquakes. But after hijackers attacked and destroyed the Twin Towers, the
government asked for aerial assistance, which Greenfeld was happy to
provide.
The planes are equipped with advanced LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging
System) technology, which must work along with a GPS Center. The GPS Center,
founded two years ago at NJIT, is located 10 miles from the World Trade
Center site.
"What NJIT is doing is a great help to the recovery workers," said Richard
Snay, a manager at the National Geodetic Survey, a division of NOAA.
Snay lauded NJIT Thursday for increasing the speed with which it records the
locations of the planes. Every second, Snay said, NJIT retrieves data on the
satellites and sends it on to the government.
"The increased data collection rates," Snay added, "are critical for
accurately positioning the aircraft used to map the disaster sites."
A private firm has been hired to produce the three-dimensional maps, which
are "extremely helpful to recovery teams trying to clean up the rubble and
identify unstable structures," he said.
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Sep 26, 2001
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