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GIScience Blog

Category: Research

  • Humanitarian OSM Stats: How to monitor humanitarian mapping in the HOT Tasking Manager? – Part 4

    Since 2010, organized humanitarian mapping has evolved as a constant and growing element of the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. With more than 7,000 projects in 150 countries, humanitarian mapping has become a global community effort. Due to this large amount of projects, it can be difficult to get an overview on mapping activity. This is…

  • Successful PhD Defense by Amin Mobasheri on OSM quality enrichment for wheelchair routing

    Last Friday Amin Mobasheri of the GIScience Research Group Heidelberg University successfully defended his PhD in Geoinformatics. Due to the Corona pandemy the defense was conducted in hybrid mode with the committee members participating virtually and only Prof. Zipf and Amin being physically in the room. What a shame there was no joint celebration possible…

  • New paper published about the OSM Sketch Map Tool

    The Sketch Map Tool supports participatory mapping approaches and risk communication. An new paper presents the different functionalities of the tool. OSM data quality can be evaluated regarding the fitness for the sketch-map-approach. Based on the great idea of Field Papers, paper maps can be printed out for the use in the field, and afterwards,…

  • Open Data + Open Software – A perfect match

    On 1st March 2021, the Swiss Federal Office of Topography (SwissTopo) released all official geodata according to the principles of “Open Government Data (OGD)”. With this step, Swisstopo is making large volumes of high quality geodata freely accessible. We are most excited about the 3D data, which includes digital surface models, digital terrain models and…

  • Press release: Understanding the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Landscape Dynamics

    The research of the 3DGeo group is featured in a press release about Understanding the Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Landscape Dynamics. The text illustrates how Heidelberg geoinformation scientists develop new computer-based method to analyse topographic changes. The described method is published in this article: Anders, K., Winiwarter, L., Mara, H., Lindenbergh, R., Vos, S.…

  • Humanitarian OSM Stats: How to monitor humanitarian mapping in the HOT Tasking Manager? – Part 3

    Since 2010 organized humanitarian mapping has evolved as a constant and growing element of the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. With more than 7,000 projects in 150 countries humanitarian mapping has become a global community effort. Due to this large amount of projects, it can be difficult to get an overview on mapping activity. This is…

  • Hells Bells – interactive 3D view of underwater speleothems

    In collaboration with the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University, the 3DGeo group reconstructed underwater speleothems in a cave in Yucatán, Mexico. The so-called “Hells Bells” are fascinating formations in several sinkholes, at the boundary layer between fresh- and saltwater. The full 3D mesh model obtained from several thousand photographs taken by a professional…

  • Fully automatic spatiotemporal segmentation of 3D LiDAR time series for the extraction of natural surface changes

    When and where do changes occur in dynamic natural landscapes? A new method has been published that enables the automatic extraction of surface changes from entire time series of 3D point clouds. The developed method of spatiotemporal segmentation extracts changes regarding their surface change history, which makes it particularly useful for natural scenes that are…

  • Introducing the Ohsome Quality analysT (OQT)

    The Ohsome Quality analysT (short OQT) is the name of a new software implemented by HeiGIT that is based on the #ohsome framework. Its main purpose is to compute quality estimations on OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. Any end user such as humanitarian organisations, public administrations, as well as researchers or any other institution or party interested…

  • The evolution of humanitarian mapping within the OpenStreetMap community

    In the past 10 years, the collaborative maps of OpenStreetMap (OSM) have been used to support humanitarian efforts around the world as well as to fill important data gaps for implementing major development frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In a recently accepted paper we provide a comprehensive assessment of the evolution of…

  • Humanitarian OSM Stats: How to monitor humanitarian mapping in the HOT Tasking Manager? – Part 2

    Since 2010 organized humanitarian mapping has evolved as a constant and growing element of the global OpenStreetMap (OSM) community. With more than 7,000 projects in 150 countries humanitarian mapping has become a global community effort. Due to this large amount of projects it can be difficult to get an overview on mapping activity. This is…

  • 3D Winter Wonderland – Multi-method acquisition for snow process research

    A joint field campaign was conducted this week in the snow-covered black forest (Hundseck, 48.643°N, 8.228°E) by the research groups Hydrology and Climatology (Prof. Menzel) and 3DGeo (Prof. Höfle). Regular in-situ surveys are conducted at the site to investigate snow as crucial component of the hydrologic cycle, forest management, and evapotranspiration. Surveys comprise measurement of…