Reports of ISPRS Events

ISPRS Joint Workshop on 3D City Modeling & Applications and the 6th 3D GeoInfo Conference Wuhan, China, 26-28 June 2011 By Qing Zhu The workshop took place in Wuhan from 26 to 28 June 2011. It was held in conjunction with the 6th 3DGeoInfo conference, both hosted by the State Key Laboratory in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS), Wuhan University and by the Wuhan Urban Planning Information Center. 120 participants from 13 countries participated in the event. » Read more

Gi4DM (Geo-information for Disaster Management) Antalya, Turkey, May 2011 By Prof. Orhan Altan, ISPRS President Geomatics technologies are able to support management and recovery in the aftermath of manmade and natural disasters. However, disaster management also poses big challenges in all aspects of the geo-information cycle, from data acquisition, processing, management and delivery. For the seventh time, the International Symposium on Geo-information for Disaster Management (Gi4DM) brought in Antalya-Turkey, together researchers, developers, data providers and users from all over the world (155 participants from 33 countries) discussed these challenges. » Read more

5th International Conference on 3D Geoinformation Berlin, Germany, November 2010 By Gerhard König & Hartmut Lehmann The 5th International Conference on 3D Geoinformation (3D GeoInfo 2010), held in Berlin, Germany from November 3-4, 2010 attracted about 175 participants from 21 different countries for two days of lifely discussion and debate. 3D GeoInfo 2010 provided a forum for international researchers from academia, industry and government in the field of 3D geoinformation to discuss all aspects of data collection and modelling, data management, data analysis, and visualisation. The conference was jointly organised by the Institute of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science, Technische Universität Berlin, ISPRS Commission IV, Working Group 8, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC), European Spatial Data Research (EuroSDR), and the German Society for Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation (DGPF). » Read more

Announcements

International Workshop on "Earth Observation for Terrestrial Ecosystems" The ISPRS WG VIII/6 and VIII/8 Joint International Workshop on "Earth Observation for Terrestrial Ecosystems" Jointly organize by ISPRS WG VIII/6, WG VIII/8 & ISRS will be held at Bhopal, India on 8, November, 2011. » Read more

Editorial

Global Land Cover Mapping at fine resolutions

Dear friends,

Global land cover data are essential for global change studies and earth system simulation, such as the assessment of global environmental changes and the simulation of future environmental scenarios. In addition, land cover data are applied in national and sub-continental scale management, such as predicting and mitigating disasters, monitoring ecosystem health and services, protecting human health, and conserving biodiversity. Since 1990s, six global land cover datasets with spatial resolutions ranging from 300 meters to 1km were developed using coarse resolution remote sensing data (including MODIS, SPOT Vegetation). However, these global land cover datasets are inadequate to meet either the research needs of the global change science community or the operational requirements of national or sun-continent scale decisions and actions. The development of higher resolution global land cover dataset is becoming one of the top priorities of international and national earth observation programs.

Recently the Group on Erath Observation (GEO) has drafted its 2012-2015 WORK PLAN and invited official comments from its members. This four year's work plan reflects the conclusions of the GEO-VII Plenary, Beijing Declaration, and GEOSS Mid-Term Evaluation. It differs from the current 2009-2011 Work Plan in four main ways: (i) it derives directly from the GEOSS Strategic Targets; (ii) it groups Tasks into three thematic parts (rather than two as before); (iii) it features a streamlined number of Tasks; and (iv) it proposes an improved Work Plan management structure.. The major objective of the task is to 1) provide a suite of global land-cover and land-cover change datasets, based on improved and validated moderate resolution land-cover maps; 2) develop <50m global land-cover and land-cover change data sets, based on international community consensus and including a robust accuracy assessment; 3) improve the use of time-series products to characterize the nature and extent of land-cover change and dynamics.

This task is designed to reflect the national and regional initiatives for Global Land Cover Mapping at fine resolutions. China commenced a global land cover mapping project at 30 meter resolution at the beginning of 2010, led by State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM). It is a three year project aiming to produce global land cover data sets for the year 2000 and 2010. Primary data sources include Landsat-class data and China's HJ data in combination with MODIS data as well as Chinese's weather satellite data. While the minimum mapping unit is 30m, the final products will include land cover types at 30m and the proportion of cover at the 250m level of spatial scale. USGS is preparing its 30 meter Global Land Cover projects for the initial establishment of baseline global land cover properties for the year 2010 coupled with a monitoring strategy that provides annual updates of land cover change. This Global Land Cover mapping at 30 meter resolution requires a tremendous amount of work and personnel face many difficulties in the different implementation phrases. SBSM and USGS will collaborate on combining their efforts for producing a global land cover database for monitoring land cover change. SBSM will focus on developing global categorical land cover classes, whereas USGS will focus on the percentage cover mapping for certain land cover classes. SBSM and USGS will also collaborate on methods and datasets of change detection and annual updating of the database. A federated Global Land Cover Information Portal will also be developed to publicize the 30-meter products and all other available global land cover data sets to the world. This concept has been supported by EC (JRC), FAO, GTOS (GOFC-GOLD) and many other institutes.

ISPRS is a GEO member and has been quite active in capacity building and other tasks. Global Land Cover Mapping at fine resolutions is one of the areas ISPRS has expertise and experience. I do hope more ISPRS working groups and experts will contribute to this GEO task.

Prof. Chen Jun
Secretary General

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New publications in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Volume 66, issue 4 (July 2011)

Scanning geometry: Influencing factor on the quality of terrestrial laser scanning points
Sylvie Soudarissanane, Roderik Lindenbergh, Massimo Menenti, Peter Teunissen

Identifying degrees of freedom in pushbroom bundle adjustment
Michal Jama, Chris Lewis, Dale Schinstock

Water-removed spectra increase the retrieval accuracy when estimating savanna grass nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations
Abel Ramoelo, Andrew K. Skidmore, Martin Schlerf, Renaud Mathieu, Ignas M.A. Heitkönig

B-spline deconvolution for differential target cross-section determination in full-waveform laser scanning data
Andreas Roncat, Gunther Bergauer, Norbert Pfeifer

The selection of appropriate spectrally bright pseudo-invariant ground targets for use in empirical line calibration of SPOT satellite imagery
Barnaby Clark, Juha Suomalainen, Petri Pellikka

User interactive multiple aerial view analysis for reconstructing a large number of 3D architectural models
Sung Chun Lee, Ram Nevatia

In situ estimation of water quality parameters in freshwater aquaculture ponds using hyperspectral imaging system
Amr Abd-Elrahman, Matthew Croxton, Roshan Pande-Chettri, Gurpal S. Toor, Scot Smith, Jeffrey Hill

Unsupervised image segmentation evaluation and refinement using a multi-scale approach
Brian Johnson, Zhixiao Xie

Building roof modeling from airborne laser scanning data based on level set approach
KyoHyouk Kim, Jie Shan

Angular effect of MODIS emissivity products and its application to the split-window algorithm
Huazhong Ren, Guangjian Yan, Ling Chen, Zhaoliang Li

Experimentation of structured light and stereo vision for underwater 3D reconstruction
F. Bruno, G. Bianco, M. Muzzupappa, S. Barone, A.V. Razionale

Automatic interpretation of digital maps
Volker Walter, Fen Luo

A Boosted Genetic Fuzzy Classifier for land cover classification of remote sensing imagery
D.G. Stavrakoudis, J.B. Theocharis, G.C. Zalidis

Dynamics of chromophoric dissolved organic matter in Mandovi and Zuari estuaries — A study through in situ and satellite data
Harilal B. Menon, Nutan P. Sangekar, Aneesh A. Lotliker, P. Vethamony
 

GMES Masters Competition

From 2011 onwards the GMES Masters will reward on an annual basis the best projects and business ideas for a GMES commercial service, with the aim to support the development of GMES related entrepreneurship in Europe. Initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Bavarian Ministry of Economy, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and T-Systems, the GMES Masters 2011 calls for proposals between 1 July and 15 September 2011 in five categories.

» More details will be found on: http://www.gmes-masters.com