The LRG of the GIScience Research Group will welcome 2016 with a talk on “Multi-Source 3D Point Clouds in Geosciences and Environmental Research” in the Computer Science Colloquium of the University of Wuerzburg: http://tinyurl.com/grwzxtb.
Monday, 11 January 2016, 16.15h, Turing Lecture Hall, University of Wuerzburg
The talk will address the question how a small thing – a 3D point – can play an important role in geosciences and environmental research. Today several methods exist to capture 3D point clouds for geoscientific analysis at a wide range of spatial scales with high-end but also low-cost tools and devices. Most prominent approaches are image-based point cloud generation and active laser scanning (also referred to as LiDAR) operated on various platforms: e.g. hand-held, static on tripods, or kinematic on cars and airborne manned or unmanned vehicles (UAV). The strongly increasing availability of 3D point clouds demands for new algorithms and their evaluation for direct usage of point clouds in geosciences and environmental research. This presentation will give an overview of geoscientific applications of multi-source point clouds (e.g. from LiDAR, gaming devices and photogrammetry) and how they are processed, managed (offline and online) and analyzed. Examples will be given from ongoing research projects of the LiDAR Research Group Heidelberg (http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/lrg) in the field of natural hazard analysis, vegetation monitoring (e.g. precision agriculture) and climate change research in the Arctic.