Melbourne School of Engineering Department of Geomatics

Seminar Series 2009

You are invited to attend the Department of Geomatics Seminar Series. Seminars provide a forum for academics, research staff, students and visitors to present their research. The seminar is public. Seminars with presentations by visiting researchers are held jointly with SSI Victoria and credited by 1 CPD for SSI members.

Seminars are generally held on Wednesdays at 4:30pm (unless stated otherwise), in Engineering Block C, 4th floor, Theatre C1 (C2 during Semester 1). Every last Wednesday of the month we offer an afternoon tea before the seminar, at 4pm in the Geomatics staff meeting room.

Contact Dr Stephan Winter (winter@unimelb.edu.au) for more information on the seminar.

Date

Venue

Speaker

Title

Wednesday 26 August 2009Theatre C1Pejman Peidaee
Geomatics
PhD confirmation
Wednesday, 29 July 2009Theatre C1



Theatre A1, Old Engineering




Rod Flynn and George Milfsud (SII, DSE Victoria)
4:00 Departmental afternoon tea, staff room

4:30 Departmental research seminar: tbd.

5:30-7:30
Vicmap Topographic Mapping

SSSI Seminar of the Spatial Information and Cartography Commission, Victoria
In this seminar you get access to the experts providing a thorough insight in topographic mapping for Vicmap. Using the latest technology and Victoria’s digital spatial framework datasets, DSE has created an innovative mapping system that provides current topographic mapping. Topographic mapping is a vital resource for the State of Victoria, as it is used by the general public, local, State and Australian governments, the private sector and academia. This mapping is used for recreation, route planning, emergency response and recovery, navigation, risk management, site analysis, education, flora and fauna surveys, infrastructure planning, and asset management.
Wednesday 22 July 2009 no seminar
Tuesday 21 July 2009, 5pmIDTC Theatre, Old EngineeringHedwig van Delden and Beat Huser
Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS), Maastricht, The Netherlands
http://www.riks.nl
Creating Futures with Integrated Land Use Modelling and Decision Support Systems
Creating Futures is a new and innovative 4-year research project aimed at creating tools for improving decision making in the Waikato Region of New Zealand. RIKS has been one of the consultants to Environment Waikato on the project. The research is designed to inform communities about the long-term effects of current development patterns and trends. It also aims to enhance community involvement in choosing and planning for desired futures using the following tools:
  • Scenarios (plausible regional futures);
  • Integrated spatial model (econ., pop., land use, environment);
  • DSS (what/if policy analysis); and
  • Indicators and performance measures.
Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS) is based in Maastricht, The Netherlands.  RIKS has been actively involved in research and development of spatially-dynamic models and Integrated Spatial Decision Support Systems (IDSS) for spatial planning and policy-making since 1990.  Typically these systems represent the decision domain by means of integrated, dynamic, and high-resolution spatial models running on top of GIS (Geographical Information Systems) data layers.  They allow the user to develop a deep understanding of the linked social, economic and environmental processes that evolve within the given physical and institutional constraints of the region and/or the systems studied.  They constitute powerful tools for analysis, assessment, exploration and prediction of developments and trends set in motion by autonomous dynamics of the system and by exogenous scenarios, alternative policies and user-interventions applied through the ISDSS.  A wide range of land use planning, river basin, watershed, agricultural and climate change projects have been undertaken throughout Europe, the Mediterranean, Jamaica, China and New Zealand.
Hedwig van Delden - Managing Director of RIKS. Ms van Delden holds a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering with a specialisation in Water Resource Management and Environmental Sciences from the University of Enschede, The Netherlands. She has since been actively involved in land use modelling, dynamic spatial model integration and the development of Decision and Policy Support Systems and scenario studies, with a main focus on the integration and interaction of socio-economic and biophysical processes. Ms van Delden is responsible for strengthening and broadening RIK’s international networks (www.riks.nl). She has been managing projects with multiple partners in Europe and other parts of the world, with budgets reaching up to several million euros.
Dr. Beat Huser - Project Leader of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) project Creating Futures and Sustainability Projects Manager, Environment Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Dr Huser holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Z?rich, Switxerland. He has research experience in Europe, USA, India and New Zealand, and has been involved in local government in New Zealand for over 20 years.  In his present position at Environment Waikato (the Waikato Regional Council), Beat is manager of sustainability projects, responsible for indicator development, state of environment reporting and sharing the information in collaborative initiatives with other agencies and the community. He is member of various national working groups, advisory and steering committees, representing Environment Waikato and local government on current resource management and sustainability issues.
Wednesday 10 June 2009C1Lin-Jie Guan
Geomatics
Decentralized processing of spatial and spatio-temporal queries
(PhD confirmation)
Spatial and spatiotemporal queries are important functions of a geosensor network (GSN) for retrieving and analyzing spatial information about dynamic geographic phenomena and objects. Spatial operations are the foundations of responding to such broad range of spatial queries in a GSN. This research investigates the development of a set of primitive spatial operations to process spatial queries relevant to a GSN. The research introduces a formal framework by modeling and computing spatial information monitored by a GSN, with the aim of designing and evaluating decentralized algorithms for efficient spatial queries processing within a GSN.
Wednesday 3 June 2009 C1 Heri Sutanta
Geomatics
Spatial Planning Support Systems and SDI Platform for an Integrated Approach to Disaster Risk Reduction
(PhD confirmation)
Disaster risk reduction is an important element in ensuring safety of life, urban environment infrastructures and economic development. It is a complex situation, involving a multi-disciplinary approach, multiple stakeholders’ participation, and requiring access and sharing of multiple types of spatial and non-spatial data. A long term effort in disaster risk reduction needs to be implemented by integration of different elements in spatial planning. This research aims to develop a spatial planning support system with extended capabilities to support efforts for disaster risk reduction.
Wednesday 27 May 2009 Staff meeting room
C2
alll staff & postgrads

Muhammad Jafar Sadeq
Geomatics
4pm: Departmental afternoon tea

Monitoring Contour Topology with a Wireless Sensor Network
(PhD completion)
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enable high temporal and spatial granularity for environmental monitoring, but come with some limitations, especially energy resources. Much of the research in WSNs is focused on overcoming these limitations by processing information in the network and reporting the results of the processing to the base station. In this regard, this thesis demonstrates how a WSN may conserve its energy by monitoring contour topology in the network, and reporting only changes in topology, and this is done by observing the topology of the regions that are demarcated by the contour lines.
Wednesday 13 May C2 Matt Duckham
Geomatics
Foundations of decentralized algorithms for spatial computing
Today, almost all algorithms for spatial computing assume all spatial data is centrally stored (for example in a GIS or spatial databases) or easily accessible (for example via an internet connection). However, this assumption increasingly does not hold. Instead, in emerging spatial computing environments, like geosensor networks, data about a spatial location becomes less accessible the further distance away it is. These computing environments rely on new, decentralized algorithms for spatial computing. This talk explores the basis for decentralized spatial computing, and poses the question "What fundamental operations are needed to support decentralized spatial computing?"
Wednesday 6 May C2 Eldar Rubinov
Geomatics
Implementation of Real-Time Quality Control Procedures for Network RTK GNSS Positioning (PhD conversion)
The use of high accuracy GNSS positioning applications has increased markedly in the last decade and range of applications is becoming more and more diverse. With this increased demand, the number of critical decisions being made on the basis of positions derived from GNSS has also increased and hence it is of paramount importance to know that the derived positions are of high quality, dependable and fit for purpose. This research is concerned with developing and implementing quality control procedures for real-time positioning applications.
Wednesday 29 April 12pm Arts Centre (cnr. Swanston  & Grattan St) - Harold White Theatre: Enter via the external stairs next to the School of Graduate Studies or up the internal stairs at the back of the foyer. Theatre is on the right. Pamela Fox
Google Maps, Sydney
Google Geo APIs & Geo Standards (joint seminar with SSI)
In this talk, Pamela Fox will introduce the many Google Geo developer products that let you create custom mapping applications: the Flash, JS, and Static Maps APIs, and the Google Earth API, and dive into more detail about creating custom maps to overlay your imagery in those apps. Pamela will then describe the two leading XML standards for presenting Geo data, and talk about how you can use those standards to make your data more useful and searchable. Pamela has been the Google Maps API support engineer for the last 2 years, helping developers around the world use the Google APIs.
Wednesday 22 April 2009 C2 Simon Jude
http://www.simonjude.co.uk/
Visualising Coastal Futures (joint seminar with SSI)
I will run through some examples of the Tyndall Centre visualisation work I was involved with, including an EU-funded project. I'll also highlight some of the issues facing coastal managers in the UK and EU that we have studied and which can benefit from visualisation technologies.
Wednesday 8 April 2009 C2 Pan Wang
Geomatics
Real-time data visualization in Collaborative Virtual Environments for emergency training (PhD conversion)
Current Collaborative Virtual Environment for virtual training can not provide trainees with adequate information in a large-scale and complex outdoor environment. Development of a component for integrating real-time data in CVEs and overall framework on fast and automatic virtual scenario building technique will improve the immersion experience and reality of the virtual training environment, as well as strengthen the ability of decision making and collaboration for the trainees.
Wednesday 25 March 2009 C2 Haohui Chen
Geomatics
Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) - An Effective Technique for Knowledge Transfer between Scientists and Local Farmers (PhD confirmation)
The research is to provide an Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) to transfer knowledge between scientists and local farmers, in order to assist farmers to manage their farmlands effectively based on scientists' knowledge. The prototype of CVE is based on SIEVE which has been proved to be an effective tool for environment visualization in many cases.
Wednesday 11 March 2009 C2 Mehdi Ravanbakhsh, CRCSI Road junction extraction from high resolution aerial imagery assisted by topographic database information
Road junctions are important components of a road network. However, they are usually not explicitly modeled in existing road extraction approaches. In this research, road junctions are modeled in detail as area objects and a new snake-based approach is proposed for their automatic extraction through the use of an existing geospatial database. Road arm extraction results provide fixed boundary conditions for the proposed snake. A detailed model of a road junction needs to consider possible existence of traffic islands. Traffic islands are extracted using level sets. The approach was tested using aerial black-and-white ortho-images of 10 cm ground resolution taken from suburban and rural areas.
Wednesday 4 March 2009 C2 Prof Harlan Onsrud University of Maine Creative Commons Licensing and Non-creative Geographic Data (joint seminar with SSI)
Why does the scientific community need a simple method for letting each of us know that we are allowed legally to build on the work and data products of each other without asking permission? Does merely following the traditional practices of science and giving credit now make me a lawbreaker?  What's the problem, how did we get here and what's the solution? Why does the solution for creative works not apply to geographic and other utilitarian data and databases?

Professor Onsrud's research focuses on the analysis of legal, ethical, and institutional issues affecting the creation and use of digital databases and the assessment of the social impacts of spatial technologies. He is past president and current acting Executive Director of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association (GSDI), past-president of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), and past Chair of the U.S. National Committee (USNC) on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the National Research Council. He recently chaired a U.S. National Research Council Study on the Licensing of Spatial Data and Services and is a lifetime National Associate of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences. A unifying theme in much of his teaching and research involves the concept of "ethics driven design.". He is a licensed engineer, land surveyor and attorney. Current and past research projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, and the U.S. Department of Education. He teaches courses in Information Systems Law, Information Ethics, Cadastral and Land Information Systems, and Research Ethics.

After the research seminar (5:30pm to 7:30pm):
Google Sketchup Hands-On Workshop (Geomatics Spatial Information and Cartography Seminar 1/2009, in conjunction with SSI Victoria, Spatial Information and Cartography Commission)
Come along to the SSI Google SketchUp Workshop for a relaxed and informative insight into spatial technologies using Google SketchUp in a comfortable environment – whatever your digital mapping experience. Google SketchUp might suit your growing and developing mapping and spatial visualisation needs and this workshop will give you an introduction into the potential of this technology!
SketchUp is a 3D modeling program designed for engineers, architects, surveyors, filmmakers, game developers, and related professions. Sketchup may also be used to design buildings to be displayed on Google Earth. It was designed to be more intuitive, flexible, and easier to use than other 3D modeling programs, which often require steep learning curves. Several features allow designers to play with their designs, unlike what is possible in other 3D CAD programs. It is marketed as an easy-to-use conceptual tool with a simple interface.
The presenter of this workshop is Stephen Scott Young. Stephen has had 10 years experience in the GIS industry and mobile mapping environments. Stephen is the GE Transmission & Distribution (T&D) Customer Service Leader for Asia Pacific. In this role he manages a team of highly experienced customer service representatives providing technical consulting and support services, mostly servicing the spatial community. Stephen sits on the Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI) Committee with past roles such as Victorian Region Treasurer, as well as on the SSI Young Professionals Committee as Treasurer, Chair and now currently as Past Chair. Stephen is a graduate from the Department of Geomatics at The University of Melbourne where he completed a Bachelor of Geomatic Engineering (Honours), Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). His PhD thesis was titled Integrated Position and Attitude Determination for Augmented Reality Applications. Stephen’s research received awards such as those from BMW, the Institute of Navigation, the International Association of Geodesy and the BRW Young Inventors.
A hands-on workshop: Bring your own laptop. Limited seats; registration essential.
Location: The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Alice Hoy Building, Room 316
RSVP: saeidks@unimelb.edu.au
Wednesday 25 February 2009 no seminar
Wednesday 11 February 2009 C1 Jonathan Arundel
Department of Geomatics
Honeybee (Apis mellifera) threat agents – a new approach (PhD Confirmation)
A multitude of threats exist to the honeybee industry with the potential to impact both honey production and more significantly, agricultural and horticultural crop pollination.  The most significant of these threats in Australia is Varroa destructor, an external parasitic mite of honeybees.  A strong need exists to understand how current biosecurity control strategies might impact the spread of varroa once it is detected, and whether alternative strategies can be developed through GIScience to deliver superior outcomes.
Wednesday 4 February 2009 C1 Yunhui Wu
Department of Geomatics
Interpreting place descriptions for navigation systems (PhD Confirmation)
In route communications, people use qualitative references and relations, so called place descriptions. While current navigation systems have no capability to deal with place descriptions. This research aims to formalize an interpretation model of place descriptions for navigation systems.