Highlights

Experiences From Natural Disasters New book from Shunji Murai Higher Ground: Learning from the East Japan Tsunami and Meltdown at Fukushima NPS Shunji Murai highlights the individual and group heroism and survival, and the suffering, terror and death. Moreover these eye-witness accounts are accompanied by lessons in which the author distils the cardinal mistakes made and ways of correcting them for the future. Murai touches the hearts and minds of all readers with his serene, narrative approach and warns them to never underestimate the destructive power of nature. For experts and policy-makers in regions that are prone to natural disasters like earth quakes and tsunamis, this book is a must-read in order to put the learned lessons from Japan into practice and plans in their own communities! » Read more

ISPRS Announces Winner of Brock Gold Medal Franz Leberl Honoured for Scientific Contribution to Photogrammetry The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) is pleased to announce that o. Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Franz Leberl, Chair of the Institute for Computer Graphics and Vision at Graz University of Technology, Austria is the winner of the ISPRS Brock Gold Medal for 2012. The Medal is donated by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and is awarded quadrennially for an outstanding landmark in the evolution of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. » Read more

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Editorial

The buzz is in the air. Abstracts review was finished already some weeks ago. The double blind peer review of the full papers is almost done as most working groups' chairs informed the authors of the results. Sessions are shaping form, plenary speakers are decided also. Council will meet with all TCPs at mid-April to finalize and verify all preparations were or being made, including Terms of References for next term. This Congress will be the first presentation of the new ISPRS Annals. These are the publication of all papers that went through a double blind peer review with a second proof of the minor or, sometimes, major corrections and enhancements, as pointed out by the reviewers. I'm pleased to mention this once another ISPRS first as it was my idea to introduce the idea of annals. It is a good opportunity to thank also the Congress organizers, both CD Cliff Ogleby for agreeing to start it at the Congress and to Mark Shortis for the mechanism of paper submission and review. Last but certainly not least we should thank ISPRS Fellow Wolfgang Forstner for advocating and promoting double blind peer review of symposia papers while he was TCP III 2004-2008. Now it is also the time, as always, to mobilize more participation at the Congress and supporters of ISPRS activities. It is highly important to foster national, regional and global EO projects and to encourage our younger generation to get more involved as members, co-chairs and chairs of ISPRS working groups or to lead special projects for the benefit of our society and community, alike. See you all in Melbourne 2012 down under.

Prof. Ammatzia Peled
ISPRS Second Vice President

ISPRS Council Meeting Held in Beijing

The first annual meeting of ISPRS Council was held in China Surveying and Mapping Innovation Base, Beijing, China from February 15 to 17, 2012, and was hosted by National Geomatics Center of China (NGCC). Mr. XU Deming, vice minister of Ministry of Land and Resources, and director general of National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-Information (NASG), met with ISPRS council members. A seminar on Geographic Monitoring and Analysis was held in the afternoon of April 16. ISPRS council paid technical visits to NASG, Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE) and NGCC.

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Joint IGU and ISPRS Seminar on Geo-frontier Understanding

On March 15th, 2012, a Joint Seminar on Geo-frontier Understanding was successfully organized in Beijing, by School of Geography, Beijing Normal University (BNU), and co-sponsored by International Geographical Union (IGU), International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS), and China Society of Geography (CSG). The major objective of this seminar was to discuss the basic issues of geo-frontier understating and promote inter-disciplinary collaboration among geography, Geomatics and international relations studies. More than 40 participants from Beijing Normal University，National Geomatics Center of China, Ministry of Civil Affairs, China Academy of Science, China Foreign Affairs University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Yunnan Normal University attended the seminar.

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PIA11 - Photogrammetric Image Analysis
October 5-7, 2011
Munich, Germany
by Boris Jutzi and Franz Rottensteiner

This joint workshop of the ISPRS working groups I/2, III/1, III/4, and III/5 took place on 5 -7 October 2011 at the Technical University Munich (TUM). The local organization was carried out by the Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, headed by Uwe Stilla, the chairman of ISPRS working group WGIII/5.

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Low-Cost 3D Workshop

The department of Geodesy and Geoinformation Science at the Berlin University of Technology (TU) as well as the department of Computer Science (Computer Vision) of Humboldt University (HU) hosted the Low-Cost 3D: Sensors, Algorithms, Applications workshop which was held on the 6^th and 7^th December 2011 at TU Berlin. Joint organisers of the workshop were the German Aerospace Centre (DLR Berlin-Adlershof), the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz institute as well as the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) represented by the Image Sensor Technology working group. The workshop featured live demonstrations of various systems that took place from afternoon onwards and a conference the next day including 13 talks.

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China's First Civil High-resolution Stereo Mapping Satellite ZY-3 Operates Stably in Orbit

China launched a new high-resolution remote sensing satellite, ZiYuan(ZY-3), on Jan 9, 2012, using the Long March 4B (Chang Zheng-4B -Y26) launch vehicle from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. The ZY-3 satellite fills the gaps in China's civilian mapping satellites and serves as a milestone in enhancing China's independent access to high-resolution geospatial information and resolving the strategic shortage of fundamental geographic information resources.

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4th ISDE Digital Earth Summit ― Digital Earth and Technology
September 2-4, 2012
Wellington，New Zealand
http://www.digitalearth12.org.nz/

We are very pleased to announce that the 4th Digital Earth Summit of the International Society for Digital Earth will be held in Wellington, New Zealand, from 2 to 4 September, 2012. Registrations are open now. This Summit with theme of "Digital Earth and Technology" will focus on digital earth science and technology, including advanced earth observation systems, augmented reality and visualisation, high-performance computation and simulation, and spatial data infrastructures. Wellington City Council and Land Information New Zealand have partnered to bring the 4th Digital Earth Summit to Wellington. The Summit will bring the best speakers from overseas and from New Zealand to exchange knowledge and explore technology advancement in this exciting area. The inaugural Digital Earth Summit was held in Auckland in 2006.

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ASPRS New Officers 2012 selected

The results of the 2012 election have been tallied by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Tellers Committee and they reported that Stewart Walker, Director - Product Initiatives for the Geospatial eXploitation Products business area of BAE Systems in San Diego, California, won the election to become ASPRS Vice President for 2012. With the installation of officers at the ASPRS Annual Conference in March, Roberta (Bobbi) Lenczowski moves into the position of President; Stephen D. DeGloria becomes President-Elect, and Gary Florence becomes Past President. Matthew Dunbar, Robert Thomas, Stuart Blundell, Christopher Parrish and Michael Zoltek elected as Assistant Division Directors.

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Call for Papers: Journal of Remote Sensing
Special Issue "Earth Observation Technology Cluster: Innovative Sensor Systems for Advanced Land Surface Studies"
Paul Aplin, Doreen Sandra Boyd, Alison Marsh (Guest Editors)

This special issue focuses on innovative technology used in remote sensing of the terrestrial or land surface. The Earth Observation Technology Cluster is an initiative to promote development and communication in this field (www.eotechcluster.org.uk). The observation or measurement of some property of the land surface is central to a wide range of scientific investigations conducted in many different disciplines, and in practice there is much consistency in the instruments used for observation and the techniques used to map and model the environmental phenomena of interest. Using remote sensing technology as a unifying theme, this initiative provides an opportunity for presentation of novel developments from, and cross-fertilisation of ideas between, the many and diverse members of the terrestrial remote sensing community. The scope of the special issue covers the full range of remote sensing operation, from new platform and sensor development, through image retrieval and analysis, to data applications and environmental modelling. Example topics include novel remote sensing platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles; emerging instrumentation such as fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and terrestrial LiDAR; modern image retrieval and storage techniques such as networked data transmission and distributed computing; new image analysis and modelling approaches such as hypertemporal observation; and contemporary and significant application areas such as circumpolar and cryospheric remote sensing. Research papers and innovative review papers are invited on any topic under the broad theme of technological developments in remote sensing of the land surface.

» Read more

New publications in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Volume 67 (January 2012)

Parameter-free ground filtering of LiDAR data for automatic DTM generation
Domen Mongus, Borut Žalik

Influence of solar elevation in radiometric and geometric performance of multispectral photogrammetry
Eija Honkavaara, Lauri Markelin, Tomi Rosnell, Kimmo Nurminen

A new shape from shading technique with application to Mars Express HRSC images
R. O'Hara, D. Barnes

Improving classification accuracy of airborne LiDAR intensity data by geometric calibration and radiometric correction
Wai Yeung Yan, Ahmed Shaker, Ayman Habib, Ana Paula Kersting

Determining fast orientation changes of multi-spectral line cameras from the primary images
Jürgen Wohlfeil

3D building reconstruction based on given ground plan information and surface models extracted from spaceborne imagery
Frederik Tack, Gurcan Buyuksalih, Rudi Goossens

Estimation of the relationship between remotely sensed anthropogenic heat discharge and building energy use
Yuyu Zhou, Qihao Weng, Kevin R. Gurney, Yanmin Shuai, Xuefei Hu

Combination of individual tree detection and area-based approach in imputation of forest variables using airborne laser data
Mikko Vastaranta, Ville Kankare, Markus Holopainen, Xiaowei Yu, Juha Hyyppä, Hannu Hyyppä

Combining the matter element model with the associated function of probability transformation for multi-source remote sensing data classification in mountainous regions
Ainong Li, Jingang Jiang, Jinhu Bian, Wei Deng

An assessment of the effectiveness of a random forest classifier for land-cover classification
V.F. Rodriguez-Galiano, B. Ghimire, J. Rogan, M. Chica-Olmo, J.P. Rigol-Sanchez

Object-oriented analysis of multi-temporal panchromatic images for creation of historical landslide inventories
Tapas R. Martha, Norman Kerle, Cees J. van Westen, Victor Jetten, K. Vinod Kumar

Relative INS/GNSS aerial control in integrated sensor orientation: Models and performance
M. Blázquez, I. Colomina

Urban vegetation detection using radiometrically calibrated small-footprint full-waveform airborne LiDAR data
Bernhard Höfle, Markus Hollaus, Julian Hagenauer

New publications in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Volume 68 (March 2012)

Comparative evaluation of the Vegetation Dryness Index (VDI), the Temperature Vegetation Dryness Index (TVDI) and the improved TVDI (iTVDI) for water stress detection in semi-arid regions of Iran
Parinaz Rahimzadeh-Bajgiran, Kenji Omasa, Yo Shimizu

Building-damage detection using pre- and post-seismic high-resolution satellite stereo imagery: A case study of the May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake
Xiaohua Tong, Zhonghua Hong, Shijie Liu, Xue Zhang, Huan Xie, Zhengyuan Li, Sonlin Yang, Weian Wang, Feng Bao

Assessing post-fire vegetation recovery using red–near infrared vegetation indices: Accounting for background and vegetation variability
S. Veraverbeke, I. Gitas, T. Katagis, A. Polychronaki, B. Somers, R. Goossens

Integrated point and edge matching on poor textural images constrained by self-adaptive triangulations
Bo Wu, Yunsheng Zhang, Qing Zhu

Building extraction from oblique airborne imagery based on robust façade detection
Jing Xiao, Markus Gerke, George Vosselman

Relative radiometric correction of multi-temporal ALOS AVNIR-2 data for the estimation of forest attributes
Qing Xu, Zhengyang Hou, Timo Tokola

Spatio-temporal patterns in vegetation start of season across the island of Ireland using the MERIS Global Vegetation Index
Brian O'Connor, Edward Dwyer, Fiona Cawkwell, Lars Eklundh

Mathematical morphology-based generalization of complex 3D building models incorporating semantic relationships Junqiao Zhao, Qing Zhu, Zhiqiang Du, Tiantian Feng, Yeting Zhang

Effect of canopy structure on sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence
A. Fournier, F. Daumard, S. Champagne, A. Ounis, Y. Goulas, I. Moya

3D terrestrial lidar data classification of complex natural scenes using a multi-scale dimensionality criterion: Applications in geomorphology
N. Brodu, D. Lague

Oil spill feature selection and classification using decision tree forest on SAR image data
Konstantinos Topouzelis, Apostolos Psyllos

Discrepancy measures for selecting optimal combination of parameter values in object-based image analysis
Yong Liu, Ling Bian, Yuhong Meng, Huanping Wang, Shifu Zhang, Yining Yang, Xiaomin Shao, Bo Wang

Deriving optical properties of Mahakam Delta coastal waters, Indonesia using in situ measurements and ocean color model inversion
Syarif Budhiman, Mhd. Suhyb Salama, Zoltán Vekerdy, Wouter Verhoef

Multi-class predictive template for tree crown detection
Calvin Hung, Mitch Bryson, Salah Sukkarieh