Our Changing Landscape – Timsah Arena - Apollo Mapping
Posted on July 12th, 2016

Our Changing Landscape – Timsah Arena

In this monthly feature, we span the globe to examine Our Changing Landscape with time series of medium resolution RapidEye satellite imagery. The RapidEye archive dates back to late 2008 and already contains more than 8 billion square kilometers of data. We keep our focus on infrastructure for at least another month, moving from Ilısu Dam to another recently-completed project in Turkey, Timsah Arena.

The RapidEye Constellation

RapidEye is a constellation of five 5-meter medium resolution satellites each offering five spectral bands of information. The RapidEye constellation offers daily revisits to every location on the planet with a huge footprint that is 77-km wide. The data is priced competitively with a starting cost of $1.28 per square kilometer for all five spectral bands – academics do receive discounts. RapidEye adds a fifth band, the red edge, to the ‘traditional’ multispectral set of blue, green, red and near-infrared (NIR). The additional spectral data in the red edge band allows users to extract more useful land ‘information’ than can be from traditional 4-band imagery sources. When RapidEye imagery is ordered as a Level 3A Orthorectified product, images from multiple dates are extremely well registered, making it the ideal data source for Our Changing Landscape.

The Construction of Timsah Arena, Turkey

Click on the image above to see an animation of 5-meter natural color RapidEye imagery collected over Timsah Arena, Turkey on June 26, 2011, October 23, 2013, May 19, 2014, April 17, 2015 and March 31, 2016. In these images, you can see the original small stadium that was torn down in 2011 and then the construction of Timsah Arena in the subsequent images. We love the teal blue/aquamarine roof in the 2016 image! (Images Courtesy: BlackBridge)

The idea for Timsah Arena dates back to 2010 when the original design concept called for a bright green roof with an open crocodile head as the entrance to the football stadium. While it was a unique design to say the least, it was scraped in the end for a more traditional bowl-shaped stadium with a duller green roof. Timsah Arena translates to Crocodile Arena which was an appropriate name (and an original design) for the stadium as it is home to the Turkish Süper Lig football (soccer) team Bursaspor, or the Crocs – do you see how the name of the stadium and its design make sense now?!

Timsah Arena is located in Bursa, Turkey which is on the west side of the country about 20 miles south of the Sea of Marmara; and 60 miles south of Istanbul at about 350 feet above sea level. The construction of the stadium was completed from June 2011 to December 21, 2015 by Gintaş Construction Contracting and Trade Inc. Originally scheduled to open much earlier, Timsah Arena has seen its fair share of controversy, for instance some refer to it as Bursa Metropolitan Stadium; and others claim that it was built as a way for the current political party to stay in power. Timsah Arena has a seating capacity between 43,000 and 44,000 making it the fifth largest in the country. Now that you know a bit about the stadium, it is time to turn to a time series of 5-meter RapidEye imagery to track the progress of construction from start to completion.

If you would like to find out more about using RapidEye for your academic studies, engineering projects or any landscape analysis, let us know at sales@apollomapping.com or (303) 993-3863.

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