Planetary Restoration: Informing Pathways Through Earth Observations
Richard Lucas, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom
Using VGI for Social Good: Potentials and Pitfalls for Using OSM for Humanitarian Aid and Climate Mitigation
Alexander Zipf, Heidelberg University, Germany
Mobile Sensing and Mapping: Where We Stand
Costas Armenakis, York University, Canada
Planetary Restoration: Informing Pathways Through Earth Observations
Richard Lucas
Aberystwyth University
United Kingdom
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Brief Bio
Professor Richard Lucas (Aberystwyth University’s Department of Geography and Earth Science) has over 35 years of experience in multi-scale temporal characterisation of primarily vegetated environments from Earth observation data in support of ecological, biogeographical, carbon cycle and climate science, with this obtained primarily through academic research/teaching and government-related positions in Australia and the UK He continues to lead the conceptual development and implementation of the globally applicable Living Earth approach for consistent characterisation, mapping and monitoring of environments from spaceborne data and has provided significant contributions to the generation of global products including forest extent (with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)), woody above ground biomass (with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Climate Change initiative) and mangrove extent and change (the Global Mangrove Watch, with Wetlands International and The Nature Conservancy). At national to regional levels, he has developed innovative products on secondary forests vegetation structure and land cover (including in Amazonia, Africa, Australia, Wales), that have increased understanding of ecosystem states and dynamics and environmental change. He has contributed to policy and land management agendas and engaged in public understanding of Earth observation science and global environmental issues.
Abstract
Over past decades, Earth observations have provided unique insights into how our planet has changed through human activities as well as natural events and processes. In this keynote, Prof. Richard Lucas will provide a perspective on how these same data can be used to inform the restoration of ecosystems and environments, the conservation and protection of biodiversity and more sustainable use of resources with the ultimate goal of improving the well-being of both humans and nature. Using diverse examples from around the world, the capacity to consistently retrieve or classify descriptors of the environment historically and over multiple spatial and temporal scales from optical, radar and/or lidar data and then combine these to generate spatial insights into the past and current states and dynamics of landscapes will be conveyed. Options and opportunities for using this information to imagine, value, co-design and agree on future landscapes under a range of change scenarios and monitor progress towards ambitions and evaluate risk will then be conveyed. Particular focus will be on using information from Earth observations but other sources as evidence for change impacts and pressures, whether these be driven by factors such as economy and climate.
Using VGI for Social Good: Potentials and Pitfalls for Using OSM for Humanitarian Aid and Climate Mitigation
Alexander Zipf
Heidelberg University
Germany
http://uni-heidelberg.de/gis
Brief Bio
Prof. Dr. Alexander Zipf is chair of GIScience (Geoinformatics) at Heidelberg University (Department of Geography) since late 2009. He is member of the Centre for Scientific Computing (IWR) and founding member of the Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE). His core research interests include VGI, crowdsouring and analysing of user generated geoinformation for several application domains, especially transportation and humanitarian aid. Currently he is busy establishing the Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT)as a non profit organization with the goal of transferring results from basic research into practice ion particular in the three core areas: Smart Mobility, GI for Humanitarian Aid and Big Spatial Data Analytics.
Between 2012 -2018 he was speaker of the graduate school “CrowdAnalyser - Spatio-temporal Analysis of User-generated Content“. He is also member of the editorial board of several journals and organized a set of conferences and workshops. 2012-2015 he was regional editor of the ISI Journal Transactions in GIS (Wiley). Currently he is associated editor of the international journal Geo-spatial Information Science (GSIS) by Taylor & Francis (open access).
Before coming to Heidelberg he led the Chair of Cartography at Bonn University and earlier was Professor for Applied Computer Science and Geoinformatics at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany. He has a background in Mathematics and Geography from Heidelberg University and finished his PHD at the European Media Laboratory EML in Heidelberg where he was the first PhD student. There he also conducted further research as a PostDoc for 3 years.
Abstract
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) has gained popularity in recent years as a data source for social good, particularly in the fields of humanitarian aid but also towards climate mitigation. This talk explores the potentials and pitfalls of using OSM for humanitarian aid and climate mitigation. The potentials of OSM include its ability to provide timely and accurate information to aid workers and climate researchers, while the pitfalls include concerns around data quality and bias. While there are significant challenges to overcome in using OSM for social good, its potential to contribute to these efforts is substantial, and I will highlight some recent examples developed by HeigiT.org how it can be used in real world applications.
Mobile Sensing and Mapping: Where We Stand
Costas Armenakis
York University
Canada
Brief Bio
Dr Costas Armenakis is a Professor of Geomatics Engineering, Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of photogrammetric engineering and remote sensing mapping and include intelligent mobile systems for automated and autonomous sensing and mapping applications; 3D reconstruction from optical and range data, spatial awareness and intelligence, and AI and ML methods for change detection, image segmentation, classification, and autonomous navigation. He is the Co-Editor and Chapter Author of the book Unmanned Vehicle Systems for Geomatics: Towards Robotic Mapping, and the Associate Editor and Chapter Author, Chapter 4 Unmanned Aerial Systems for Low-Altitude Remote Sensing, ASPRS Manual of Remote Sensing, 4th edition. He is an ISPRS Fellow and serves on the editorial boards of several journals.
Abstract
The availability of small to medium size ground and aerial mobile platforms equipped with integrated navigation and mapping sensors has led to wide use of these systems for geospatial data collection for generating 3D maps such as high-definition maps and digital twin infrastructures. In this presentation we will discuss the advances on various sensor localization and scene mapping approaches, collaborative systems and multi-modal sensor integration, computing architectures, and sensor data processing for complete, rapid, and accurate 3D scene reconstruction for reality capture towards the generation of various types of maps from point clouds to segmented virtual image types.