Post-Hurricane Katrina coastal oblique aerial photographs collected from Panama City, Florida, to Lakeshore, Mississippi, and the Chandeleur Islands, Louisiana, August 31, 2005

Image Acquisition: Photographs were taken with two Nikon F3 cameras, each with a fixed 50-millimeter lens and a Skylight filter. One camera shot the odd-numbered film rolls, and the other camera shot the even-numbered rolls. Both cameras were equipped with a Nikon MF-14 data back. Rolls were numbered by hand in the air. Film used was Kodak Ektachrome E100G. Commonly used shutter speeds were 1/250 seconds or 1/125 seconds. A constant shutter speed was attempted but may have veried if there was a noticeable change in light levels. The f-stop was changed to compensate for changes in light levels. The Nikon MF-14 data back added day of the month, hour, and minute (UTC) to the lower right-hand corner of the photo. All photographs were taken from the second-to-last rear starboard window of the airplane. Independent of all other equipment, a Rockwell Collins PLGR GPS recorded navigation fixes, at a 30-second interval, acquired from a National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) string during the flight. A Compix Titler unit provided video subtitles that include latitude, longitude, and time (Hour:Minute:Second). Navigation was provided to the video by a Trimble Centurion GPS receiver, and time was provided by the titler unit's internal clock, which had been synchronized with UTC time. This camera's images are denoted by "r###s##" in the filename. The images are labeled with the following filename format: yyyy_mmdd_r###s##.jpg, where yyyy denotes the year, mmdd denotes the month and day, r### is the roll number, and s## is the slide number of the image. For example, image 2005_0831_r001s03.jpg was taken August 31, 2005, the first roll of the flight, the third slide. Photographs were also taken using a Nikon D1X camera. Image size is approximately 6 megapixels. Photographer: Karen L.M. Morgan. This camera's images are denoted by a "d" in the filename. The images are labeled with the following filename format: yyyy_mmdd_hhmmss.jpg, where yyyy denotes the year, mmdd denotes the month and day, and hhmmss hour, minutes, and second of the image. For example, image 2005_0831_164000d.jpg was taken August 31, 2005, at 16:40:00 UTC. The video and still photography were shot out of the rear starboard windows of the airplane.

E6 Ektachrome slide processing by Zebra Color Photo Lab in St. Petersburg, Fla. Date, film, and roll number printed on slide mount.

Slide Scanning and Processing: Slides were scanned using a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 scanner and Nikon Scan 4 software. The slides were scanned using Digital Image Correction and Enhancement (ICE) technology at a resolution of 3000 dots per inch (DPI) and files were saved as 18.6-megabyte TIFF images. The TIFF images were then converted to JPEG images at a resolution of 3,000 DPI using Adobe Photoshop CS6. ICE technology automatically removes artifacts, such as dust and scratches from scanned images. Only JPEG images are included in this report. The photograph names provide information about the photograph's year, date, roll number, and slide number. For example, slide 2005_0831_r030s01 was taken August 31, 2005, and is the first slide for roll 30. Slide names (year_monthday_roll number_slide number) and time (hour, minute) were manually entered into a Microsoft Excel 2011 spreadsheet. A Nikon MF-14 data back marked the time each photograph was acquired on the lower right corner of the image in day, hour, and minute format. It is assumed, for the purposes of location, that the photographs were taken at a constant rate during any given minute of flight. To assign a time value in seconds to each photograph, the number of photographs taken during each minute was evenly distributed across those 60 seconds. For example: if 15 photographs were taken during minute 19:00, we assume that a picture was taken every 4 seconds. The photographs were then assigned the time values 19:00, 19:04, 19:08, and so on. It should be noted that the positions assigned to each photograph are an estimate of the aircraft position, not the location of the landmark photographed.

Navigation Files from GPS: Navigation files were extracted as comma-delimited American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) text files. The Rockwell Collins PLGR recorded the following: waypoint_name, projection, latitude (degrees, minute, seconds), longitude (degrees, minute, seconds), altitude, datum, heading, and elevation relative to mean sea level for the entire flight every 30 seconds; however, no time was recorded. Latitude and longitude from the Rockwell Collins PLGR navigation files were converted from degrees, minutes, and seconds to decimal degrees using a custom Perl script written by K. Morgan.

Video Acquisition: The video was shot out of the rear starboard window of the airplane using a Sony DCR-VX1000 Handycam operated by Phillip Thompson. The camera recorded the video on Mini Digital Video (DV) tapes and sent the video signal to a Panasonic AG-5700 to record on Super Video Home System (SVHS) tape. The SVHS video was digitally captured using MAC iMovie and divided into 5-minute segments consistent with the 5-minute HTML pages, each spanning a 5-minute sections of the flight. Mini DV tapes were digitally captured using a Pioneer Elite Reference DVD Recorder DVR-7000 and saved to DVD.

Navigation File Interpolation from Video: Latitude, longitude (degree, decimal minutes) and time were manually extracted from the video every 1-5 minutes. Using a custom Perl script written by K. Morgan, latitude and longitude were converted to decimal degrees. Then the time was interpolated between these fixes to produce a 1-second time value record (hour:minute:second) for the entire survey and saved as the comma-separated value file.

Digital Videos: Mini Digital Video (DV) tapes were converted to Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) using a Pioneer Elite Reference DVD Recorder DVR-7000. The videos are not included in this report.

Processed Navigation: The values from the 1-second time value record for the entire flight were merged with the time estimates for each image to produce a latitude, longitude and time record for each slide. The processed navigation file was saved as a comma-separated value (csv) file, ds1033_05CCH02.csv, using Microsoft Excel 2011.

Geospatial Processing: The spreadsheets containing navigation data were edited using Microsoft Excel 2011 and saved as comma-separated value (CSV) files to make them compatible with ArcGIS software. The latitude and longitude data from the CSV navigation file, called XSTORMS.h20050831_photographs, were used to produce ESRI shapefiles using ArcGIS 10.1. These shapefiles were used to produce the JPEG maps included in this report. The shapefiles are not included in this report.

Survey map creation: The survey maps provided in this archive were created with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) ArcGIS 10.1 software and saved as Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files. Survey maps were edited using Adobe Illustrator CS6 and exported in JPEG format.

Google Earth file creation: The KML files were created using the photographic navigation file ds1033_05CCH02.csv. The storm track (in KML format) was provided by Unisys Weather. The USGS is the originator of all other layers. To aid navigation through the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) file, each image was assigned a sequential KML number. Table 1 of this report shows the KML number given to each image, the corresponding image name, and associated attributes. Each point on the Google Earth file contains the KML number, storm name, latitude, longitude, image name, geographic area, date, time, a thumbnail of the full-size photograph, and links to the full-size photographs and contact sheets.

EXIF headers: Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) and International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) headers were populated from the command prompt using ExifTool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool, 2012) ExifTool was executed from a directory containing all photographs to be edited and a CSV file with information for each of the photographs. The metadata values for photo creation including time, GPS latitude, GPS longitude, keywords, credit, artist (photographer), caption, copyright, and contact were added to each photograph's EXIF header using a Perl script called met_add.pl.

FACS Logs: In addition to the process steps described above, the following steps were taken to produce this Data Series Report: digital Field Activity Collection System (FACS) logs were created at the beginning of each flight and saved as PDF and TXT files. In addition, an HTML-based format was used to present the various parts of this archive.

Added keywords section with USGS persistent identifier as theme keyword.