GIScience / Geoinformatics Research Group

Featured Photo: Ohsome dashboard interface for Heidelberg, Germany. In the words of Confucius, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” As we release OSHDB (OpenStreetMap History Database) Version 1.0, we look back at versions 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, and all the other small improvements to our historical OpenStreetMap database as the [...]

If you’re on the job market or know someone who is, check out this exciting new opening at GIScience. The offer is included as text below! You are interested in enhancing methods for analyzing & improving OpenStreetMap data? You are an experienced Spatial Data Scientist innovating geoinformatics methods & workflows? You have profound hands-on experience [...]

Der Klimawandel, Grenz- und Wasserkonflikte stellen enorme Herausforderungen für die aktuelle und kommenden Generationen dar. In all diesen Bereichen und darüber hinaus bietet die Geographie einmalige Chancen, zielgerichtet Lösungen zu erarbeiten. Das Geographische Institut der Universität Heidelberg möchte gemeinsam mit der Fachschaft Geographie, dem HeiGIT(Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology), GeoDACH e.V. und anderen internationalen Partnerorganisationen Aufmerksamkeit auf das Fach Geographie und [...]

The commune Sandhausen (Baden-Württemberg) got its name from the inland dune, which is located in the area of the village. In 2021 and 2022, the 3DGeo group of Heidelberg University conducted UAV-based and ground-based surveys of three areas of the inland dune of Sandhausen to acquire 3D point clouds and orthophotos. The dataset is freely and [...]

As of 02.11.2022 we have reached objects 10,107,826,483* in our oshdb. As such, we think it is most definitely time to celebrate! *For information on the background this figure, read our Basic guide to OSM data filtering ;) This blog post is all about reaching 10 billion objects in OpenStreetMap. For the database to aggregate such a wonderful [...]

We have exciting ohsome news! As many of you know, past OSHDB updates happened weekly and led to a delay between the data in OpenStreetMap (OSM) and our database. Basically, you had to wait up to a week to see changes in OSM reflected in the OSHDB. From this point forward, that lag is a [...]

Welcome back to our ohsome region of the month series! In this post, we’ll take a look at the temporal development of highways and added smoothness-information, as well as social facilities and updates on map development for Kyiv. Before we start, if you’re new to the series, make sure to check out previous installments of [...]

The software HELIOS++ simulates the laser scanning of a given virtual scene that can be composed of different spatial primitives and 3D meshes with distinct granularity. The high computational cost of this type of simulation software demands efficient computational solutions. Classical solutions based on GPU are not well suited when irregular geometries compose the scene [...]

The fourth edition of the Innsbruck Summer School of Alpine Research took place in September 2022, finally back in the lovely mountain landscape of the Ötztal valley in Tyrol, Austria. Once again, 40 participants - young researchers from all over the world - gathered in Obergurgl to learn and exchange about new concepts and solutions [...]

Morphologies of highly complex star dunes are the result of aeolian dynamics in past and present times. These dynamics reflect climatic conditions and associated forces like sediment availability and vegetation cover, as well as feedbacks with adjacent environments. However, an understanding of aeolian dynamics on star dune morphometries is still lacking sufficient detail, and [...]