At the routine press conference held by the Ministry of Natural Resources on August 27, China's first national geometric reference imagery was officially released. This achievement is a major milestone for the Ministry of Natural Resources in actively serving the construction of Digital China and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the surveying, mapping, and geoinformation industry. It also serves as a new type of public product in surveying, mapping, and geoinformation for social services.

This achievement was jointly developed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and provincial-level natural resources authorities. It is China's first national-level geometric reference imagery covering all land territory, featuring two characteristics: first, high spatial resolution—produced using national and local high-resolution imagery, with an overall spatial resolution of 0.5 meters nationwide; second, high positioning accuracy—by overcoming technical challenges in accuracy control for mountainous areas, plateaus, areas with sparse control points, and uninhabited regions, the positioning accuracy of national remote sensing imagery has been improved by more than double overall, resolving the long-standing issue of low geometric accuracy in orthophoto imagery in western China.

According to reports, geometric reference imagery is primarily used in satellite remote sensing data production. Through high-precision registration, raw satellite imagery data can be processed into products with accurate coordinate positions. In this process, the geometric reference imagery serves as a base map template for calibrating coordinates, thereby producing imagery data products with unified positional accuracy. This is similar to a mold in block printing, ensuring that products from different production batches achieve strict positional alignment.

Building a unified national geometric reference imagery is of great significance: first, it enables accurate registration and alignment of remote sensing imagery data products produced by different enterprises and institutions, forming a satellite remote sensing imagery base map product with unified national accuracy and ensuring consistent spatial positions of information collected based on satellite remote sensing imagery; second, it improves data production efficiency, better enabling automated matching and significantly reducing the cost for enterprises and institutions to produce high-resolution remote sensing imagery data. Going forward, the Ministry of Natural Resources will promote the application and dynamic updating of the national geometric reference imagery.