Altum_PT_Footprint

A Python Tool for Altum-PT Sensor Footprint Generation and Georeferencing - Altum_PT_Footprint

Rui Gao^1,2, Mohammad Safeeq^1,2, Joshua H. Viers^1,2

¹Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA
²Valley Institute for Sustainable Technology & Agriculture, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA

Project overview

Installing field sensors enables continuous monitoring, offering valuable insights into how vegetation responds to changing environmental conditions such as temperature and sunlight. To design effective experiments, it's important to understand the sensor's field of view—specifically, how much area it can observe and what types of features it will capture. Pre-field modeling is especially useful for planning in environments that may pose physical hazards or logistical challenges for researchers.

This repository is built for the Altum-PT sensor, providing tools to simulate and visualize its footprint across the multispectral, panchromatic, and thermal bands. It is intended as a research utility to support ongoing and future projects involving field-based sensing, remote observation, and experimental planning.

Document description

1. Altum-PT-Flyer.pdf. This flyer shows a few important parameters for the sensor which we used to build the footprint model.
2. README.md. This file. Provides an overview of the project, documentation, citation, and contact information.
3. latlon_to_utm.py. Contains the function to convert latitude and longitude coordinates to UTM coordinates.
4. get_footprint_geometry.py. Contains the function to calculate the sensor footprint size and pixel resolution based on sensor parameters.
5. create_fishnet.py. Contains the function to generate a fishnet grid (as a GeoDataFrame) for the sensor footprint and export it as a shapefile.
6. main.ipynb. A few parameters need to be adjusted here for your research. After define those parameters (output_folder, height, lat, and lon), click run button. You are supposed to get the results at output_folder.
   

Notes: The Coordinate Reference System (CRS) used in this research is EPSG:32610. If your project uses a different CRS, be sure to update this value accordingly.

Citation

If you use this repository in your work, please cite it using the following DOI:

BibTeX:

@misc{gao2025altumpt_footprint,
  author       = {Rui Gao, Mohammad Safeeq, and Joshua H. Viers},
  title        = {A Python Tool for Altum-PT Sensor Footprint Generation and Georeferencing – Altum_PT_Footprint},
  year         = {2025},
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.16755440},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16755440}
}

Repository update information:

• Creation date: 2025-08-05
• Last update: 2025-08-06

Contact information if issues were found:

Rui Gao
[email protected]
[email protected]