METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR GENERATING COMPOSITE GEOSPATIAL IMAGES

The present invention provides a computer implemented method and system for compensating for cloud cover to allow the build-up of composite, cloud free images of a particular geographic area. The invention takes satellite or aerial image data as an input and temporally stacks the images for a particular geographic area, with the most recent image at the top. The time for the composite image to be produced (may be the present time, or may be a time from the past) is defined as a temporal projection plane. The most recent image prior to this plane is analysed to identify any areas obscured by clouds. Cloud free areas of the most recent image are projected onto the temporal projection plane. For the identified obscured areas, older, cloud free images in the stack are projected onto the temporal projection plane to fill the obscured areas. This forms a cloud free composite image at the defined temporal projection plane.