Visualization

Efficient Vehicle Tracking with Open Source Tools

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
Trevor Clarke, Opticks
Roxanne Canosa

Vehicle detection and tracking is a common use for manned and unmanned airborne video systems particularly the new class of wide area persistent surveillance systems. This presentation discusses a technique for near real-time vehicle detection and tracking using open source tools such as Opticks and OpenCV. A combination of existing techniques was adapted for use with high spatial resolution and low temporal resolution data.

Speaker Bio: 

Trevor Clarke is a software engineer at Ball Aerospace & Technologies. Trevor has a masters degree in computer science from RIT and is a core contributor to Opticks.

Exploratory visual pattern detection of mobile object data in attribute-time space

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
Dr Tetsuo Kobayashi, University of Utah

Recent years witnessed the emergence of massive individual-based movement data due to the location-aware devices such as global positioning system (GPS), mobile phones and radio-frequency identification (RFID). These data are overwhelming the techniques of traditional spatial analytic techniques. Researchers and practitioners are turning to spatio-temporal knowledge discovery and exploratory visualization techniques to find patterns, trends and relationships hidden in the large volume mobile object datasets. This research develops a method to visualize mobile object data in both space-time and attribute-time to discover hidden knowledge about the evolution of dynamic path properties in concert with its location in space with respect to time. Respatialization techniques project mobile object trajectories from geographic space and time to a multivariate space and time defined by choosing three other dynamic attributes of the path and forming a space from the cross-product of these attributes with time. The attributes may be other spatial or geometric properties of the path, or non-spatial quantitative attributes that are dynamic. Dual visualizations of trajectories within space-time and attribute-time can provide new insights to the dynamic evolution of individual and collective spatio-temporal patterns. In addition, visual summarization of attribute-time trajectories by three-dimensional convex hulls provides intuitive and quantitative comparison of trajectories. A visualization software environment that implements these concepts with a case study application to empirical trajectory data presents the effectiveness of the exploratory visual pattern detection in mobile object data.

Speaker Bio: 

An instructor at the University of Utah. Will be an Assistant Professor at Florida State University from August, 2011.

Decision Support System for Environmental Regulation and Licensing

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
MSc Eduardo Antonio Speranza M.Sc., Embrapa Informática Agropecuária
Dr Silvia Maria Fonseca Silveira Massruhá Ph.D.
Silva, João dos Santos Vila
Akamine, Willlian Hiroki
Vendrusculo, Laurimar Gonçalves
Lima, Helano Póvoas

The Embrapa Agricultural Informatics, decentralized unit of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), is developing a system for environmental regulation and licensing, called SISLA - Interactive System Support for Environmental Licensing. At first, the system is being used by the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, and the peculiarities of the system to specifically meet this state are being developed in partnership with the Environment Institute of Mato Grosso do Sul (Imasul).

The SISLA was conceived with the use of free or open source tools, such as PostgreSQL and its spatial extension PostGIS, MapServer and i3Geo. Among its main features, stand out the analysis of georeferenced surrounding farms applicants for environmental licensing for projects; queries georeferenced of licensing procedures; and technical analysis of the licensing process. The first allows enterprising to check, quickly and simply by the Internet, the proximity or intersection of​ your property in relation to protected areas by the state government. The second allows managers to monitor the evolution of state licensing processes in the various municipalities that comprise the state. Finally, the third allows a visual analysis of the areas of licensing applicants for technical expertise as well as its comparison with other themes, including satellite imagery, in order to find irregularities that might impede the continuity of the process.

Speaker Bio: 

Graduate at Computer Science from São Pauo University (2003) and master's at Electric Engineering from São Paulo Univesity (2008). Systems Analist from Embrapa since 2007.

Virtual Globes For Environmental Analysis

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
Prof Maria Antonia Brovelli, Polytechnic of Milan - Como Campus
Eng Giorgio Zamboni

Virtual Globes were initially released as effective and intuitive tools to view satellite and aerial photos directly superimposed on the three-dimensional model of the globe. The constant update of increasingly accurate and detailed images and the ability to customize the content through the direct mapping on the globe of any geographically localized phenomenon (physical, environmental, social, etc.), has increased not only the common and popular use of virtual globes but has also offered great opportunities for geographical representation and analysis in science.

The paper presents examples of using virtual globes for environmental purposes; in particular, three different possible solutions for the visualisation of environmental 4-dimensional variables within a specific open-source virtual globe developed by NASA (NASA World Wind) are described.

The choice of World Wind is due to its code openness and hence to the possibility of customizing it in the content and of extending its functionality. The characteristic of being written in Java makes it a platform-independent program (viewer directly executable on different operation systems) and accessible by simple web-browsers (like applet or via Java Web Start technology).
In detail we present an introduction to the main characteristics of the specific virtual globe used, a solution to show 3½D environmental variable using a WMS data-transfer approach, a solution to show 4D environmental variables using a vector-based model and an innovative systems we implemented to visualise a complete 4D doxel-model built from environmental data provided in netCDF format.

Speaker Bio: 

Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli
Degree with honors in Physics, PHD in Geodesy. Vice rector of Polytechnic of Milan with responsability for the Como Campus. Professor of GIS and Internet GIS.

Advancing Geospatially-enabled Scientific Workflow Environments with FOSS4G

Session Type: 
Poster
Presenter(s): 
Mr Graeme McFerren, CSIR
Dr Terence van Zyl
Dr Anwar Vahed
Mr Bheki Cwele
Mr Derek Hohls
Ms Bolelang Sibolla

This paper discusses advances in the development of a software environment with capabilities for accessing, utilising and incorporating geospatial data and processes into the scientific workflows of researchers interested in incorporating earth observation and geospatial analysis into their work. In previous work [McFerren et. al. 2010], we introduced the concept of geospatially-enabled scientific workflows; this paper shares progress made, insights gained and future research avenues exposed in the process of implementing EO4Vistrails (http://code.google.com/p/eo4vistrails/), a geospatial extension to the open-source VisTrails scientific workflow, provenance management, data exploration and visualization system (http://www.vistrails.org). FOSS4G software and toolsets are heavily used in EO4Vistrails to provide spatial database, OGC Web Service, geospatial analysis, data transformation and visualization capabilites. We identify the reasons for the suitability and usefulness of spatial databases in scientific workflows, in the context of wildfire research, noting, for example, that (spatial) SQL provides a clear provenance mechanism and a means to distribute processing tasks. Regarding OGC Web Services, we report that certain services are readily implemented into scientific workflows, notably the WFS and WCS, since the kinds of data they work with are well supported by many tools and applications. Other services are more difficult to incorporate: the SOS outputs data that are difficult to translate into formats acceptable to most scientific software; the WPS is very generic, increasing the challenge of developing workflow modules that can handle dynamically the variability of inputs and outputs that can be expected for a WPS.

Speaker Bio: 

Graeme McFerren is a Senior GIS Researcher working in particular on wildfire based applications in southern Africa, heavily utilising FOSS4G tools to accomplish this

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