ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — Look, up in the sky, it’s a bird, it’s a plane ….

It’s a camera.

No not that sort of camera.

A special camera that allows county and local officials to make images of buildings and roads, track resources and in general see how Baldwin County is doing. By comparing photos to those taken four years ago, planners can see how the county is growing. Fire captains can see where buildings are. Planners can see how best to deploy county and local resources.

It’s all digital,” said Kenny McIlwain, county GIS (Geographic Information System) manager. “Every county department uses it, The County Commission uses it, the Highway Department, the Planning Department, and in times of national disaster, the EMA (Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency) uses it.”

Local communities also use the data, McIlwain says, for their own planning and police, fire and rescue purposes.

The system, according to Rick Hudson, a project manager for Woolpert Inc., the company doing the photography, uses a carefully calibrated metric camera. the photos will according to Hudson, be accurate “plus or minus two and a half feet.”

The photos will be “draped” using a computer on “lidar,” (Light Detection And Ranging) topographical maps of the region accurate to plus or minus six inches to produce the detailed maps of the area, Hudson says. Any “bump or dip” the plane may have is smoothed out on the final images.

The contracts for the mapping were signed in late January, but as of Monday, only about a third of the needed images have been produced.

The reason is the weather, Hudson says. Woolpert did the first round of photos in 2001 and in 2005.

“You have to have a crystal clear day,” explained Hudson.

Another problem, especially in the north part of the county now is. “The rivers and streams have to be in their normal banks,” Hudson said. Otherwise county and local officials would get inaccurate information.

“The county installed the system in 1996, and it has been updated in 2001, 2005, and 2009,” said McIlwain. “It’s every four years.”

The contract this year is for $370,000, but McIlwain says that he can recall such services costing in the millions.

“That’s the trend in pricing now,” said McIlwain

And while the final work is due at the end of August, McIlwain says, “We’ll be viewing images long before then” as data comes in.

Ariel data, McIlwain added, is particularly useful for taxation purposes. The “eye in the sky” perspective shows things that may be hidden from a street-side inspection.

“The photography is updated by the Alabama Department of Revenue,” said McIlwain “They use it for appraisal purposes.”

To makes sure that leaves and other vegetation does not obstruct the photos, the mapping is done at this time of year, when trees are mostly bare and ground cover is sparse. It is also important, McIlwain stressed that county residents try to refrain from burning, as smoke will obscure details in the images.

The work is painstaking.

“They fly a plane with a digital sensor from east to west then west to east,” said McIlwain. In all, McIlwain estimates that there are more than 100 flight paths taking images between, “about 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.”

The times are selected to prevent shadows from becoming a factor in the images, McIlwain says. The images are produced in “true color” imaging and in “near infrared” to capture the most detail.

Besides government work, individuals and companies often purchase the images. The exact cost depends on exactly what is needed, and how many “layers” of data is required.

To see some of the images produced in previous years, go to www.onlinemapping.co.baldwin.al.us/map/