Last week two colleagues successfully defended their PhDs within the GIScience Research Group at Heidelberg University.
The first was the PhD thesis entitled “Exploring and Simulating Spatial Patterns of Urban Growth Using Data-driven and knowledge-based Approaches” by Mr. Hossein Shafeezadeh Moghaddam. The main focus was the development and evaluation of different spatiotemporal modeling strategies for assessing driving forces of land use changes and urban growth and to simulate future land use change using the case study of the megacity of Mumbai, India.
The second thesis by Maksim (Max) Rylov is entitled “Models and Methods for Cartographic Label Placement”. This dissertation introduces novel models and methods for cartographic lettering. The research supplements the existing knowledge in the field of automated label placement and presents several new methods for some specific cartographic tasks which have been neglected in the preceding research efforts. Some results of this work can be found at OpenMapSurfer.uni-hd.de, a gobal online map renderer for OpenStreetMap data.
We congratulate both colleagues for their highly successfull work and are looking forward to further cooperation. Best whishes to Max and Hossein and keep up the good work!