3D Geospatial Data Processing Group

A new paper on tree height estimation from TanDEM-X data has just been published in Remote Sensing of Environment. The article finds that tree height can be predicted using TanDEM-X metrics (backscatter, bistatic coherence, and interferometric height) in the sparse forest patches of the Arctic treeline zone at the transition from forest to tundra. Taking [...]

This week, the 3DGeo participated in the ISPRS Geospatial Week 2019 with two presentations among the sessions of the Laser Scanning Workshop with many interesting talks and poster. Presentations were given by Ashutosh Kumar in the Machine Learning Session and Katharina Anders in the Change Detection Session. Highlight: The work by Ashutosh Kumar on feature relevance in [...]

Namibia is a dry and low populated country highly dependent on agriculture, with many areas experiencing land degradation accelerated by climate change. One of the most obvious and damaging manifestations of these degradation processes are gullies, which lead to great economic losses while accelerating desertification. The development of standardized methods to [...]

Can you imagine how much sand is being moved on the beach in the course of a week? Did you ever observe truckloads of sand being transported on the beach in the absence of storms and bulldozers? It is hardly possible to estimate to the naked eye, but can be quantified with permanent terrestrial laser [...]

A paper investigating the relevance of (pre-calculated) features for 3D point cloud classification using deep learning was just published in the ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. The study presents a non-end-to-end deep learning classifier for 3D point clouds using multiple sets of input features and compares it with an implementation of the state-of-the-art [...]

Very interesting terrestrial laser scanning and terrestrial and UAV image datasets of different Alpine sites in Austria have just been openly provided on PANGAEA. The data are related to the first (2015) and second (2017) edition of the Innsbruck Summer School of Alpine Research - Close Range Sensing Techniques in Alpine Terrain and can, for [...]

On May 1st, the SYSSIFOSS project has started and first test scans have already been conducted in the forest. Experciences from these initial testings serve as a basis for many field campaigns this summer which aim at the acquisition of high-density point clouds of 140 single trees with a RIEGL VZ-400 terrestrial laser scanner. Moreover, [...]

The 3DGeo group is currently testing their new UAV-borne LiDAR (ULS) system. The integrated system consists of a DJI Matrice 600 copter, a RIEGL miniVUX-1 UAV laser scanner and is complemented by an inertial measurement unit and a realtime kinematics GNSS. Combining the different components in one system allows for high-accuracy (cm) acquisition of 3D [...]

On 14th and 15th May, our 3DGeo group members Bernhard Höfle and Lukas Winiwarter were co-organizing and participating in the 4th colloquium for PhD students working on the topic of Deep Learning and its applications in Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation Processing of the Deutsche Geodätische Kommission (DGK) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photogrammetrie und [...]

The Heidelberg LiDAR Operations Simulator (HELIOS) is an open source laser scanning simulation framework for interactive simulation and visualization of terrestrial, mobile and airborne laser scanning surveys. It can be flexibly used for teaching and training of laser scanning, development of new scanner hardware and scanning methods, or generation of artificial scan data [...]