Overhead imagery of sufficient detail to build such a model is available commercially, and anyone who has done “sandbox exercises” in the Army or the Corps knows the value of a good model for planning purposes.
As to how much BETTER our satellites, etc are. . . no clue, and don’t care to speculate. THAT would be a “loose lips sink ships” type of thing. . .
What part of ‘stop talking about methods’ is so hard to understand?