Sixty years after its birth, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) evolved as a key player of earth observation, and it is continually upgraded by enhanced hardware functionality and improved overall performance in response to user requirements. The basic information gained by SAR includes the backscattering coefficient of targets, their phases (the truncated distance between SAR and its targets), and their polarization dependence. The spatiotemporal combination of the multiple data operated on the satellite or aircraft significantly increases its sensitivity to detect changes on earth, including temporal variations of the planet in amplitude and the interferometric change for monitoring disasters; deformations caused by earthquakes, volcanic activity, and landslides; environmental changes; ship detection; and so on. Earth-orbiting satellites with the appropriate sensors can detect environmental changes because of their large spatial coverage and availability. Imaging from Spaceborne and Airborne SARs, Calibration, and Applications provides A-to-Z information regarding SAR researches through 15 chapters that focus on the JAXA L-band SAR, including hardware description, principles of SAR imaging, theoretical description of SAR imaging and error, ScanSAR imaging, polarimetric calibration, inflight antenna pattern, SAR geometry and ortho rectification, SAR calibration, defocusing for moving targets, large-scale SAR imaging and mosaic, interferometric SAR processing, irregularities, application, and forest estimation. Sample data are created by using L-band SAR, JERS-1, PALSAR, PALSAR-2, and Pi-SAR-L2. This book is based on the author's experience as a principal researcher at JAXA with responsibilities for L-band SAR operation and researches. It reveals the inside of SAR processing and application researches performed at JAXA, which makes this book a valuable reference for a wide range of SAR researchers, professionals, and students.

Urban development and migration from rural to urban areas are impacting prime agricultural land and natural landscapes, particularly in the less developed countries. These phenomena will persist and require serious study by those monitoring global environmental change. To address this need, various models have been devised to analyze urbanization and the physical, socioeconomic, and institutional factors impacting urban development. The most promising and rapidly developing of these paradigms take advantage of new Geographical Information System (GIS) technology. Modelling Urban Development with Geographical Information Systems and Cellular Automata presents one such cutting-edge model that is more than just predictive. It describes how the model simulates the urbanization process, and it provides theoretical context to promote understanding. Starting with a practical overview of the modelling techniques used in urban development research, the author focuses on the cellular automata model and its greatest strength - the incorporation of fuzzy set and fuzzy logic approaches through which urban development can be viewed as a spatially and temporally continuous process. Real-Life Application to Develop Future Planning Methods The text describes a landmark study underway, in which the fuzzy constrained cellular automata model has been implemented in a GIS environment to simulate urban development in Sydney, Australia. Featuring a survey of associated research and a geographical database for the Sydney simulation, this book answers many general "what if" questions for urban planners and details a new approach that they can adapt to their own testing and evaluation needs. This modeling method will provide researchers and planners with the means to not just predict population trends, but to better prepare for their consequences.

This book provides an advanced introduction to the science behind automated prediction systems, focusing on sea ice analysis and forecasting. Starting from basic principles, fundamental concepts in sea ice physics, remote sensing, numerical methods, and statistics are explained at an accessible level. Existing operational automated prediction systems are described and their impacts on information providers and end clients are discussed. The book also provides insight into the likely future development of sea ice services and how they will evolve from mainly manual processes to increasing automation, with a consequent increase in the diversity and information content of new ice products. With contributions from world-leading experts in the fields of sea ice remote sensing, data assimilation, numerical modelling, and verification and operational prediction, this comprehensive reference is ideal for students, sea ice analysts, and researchers, as well as decision-makers and professionals working in the ice service industry.

Plane and Geodetic Surveying blends together theory and practice, conventional techniques and satellite-based methods, to provide the ideal book for students of surveying. It gives detailed guidance on how and when the principal surveying instruments (total stations, levels and navigational satellite receivers) should be used. It fully and clearly explains the concepts and formulae needed to convert instrument readings into useful and reliable results. It offers rigorous explanations of the theoretical background to surveying, while at the same time providing a wealth of useful advice about conducting a survey in practice. The book also contains an accompanying least square adjustment program that is available for free download. What's New in the Second Edition: Revises and updates the text to reflect recent developments in satellite navigation, laser scanners and total stations Provides a more rigorous treatment of how to calculate and use mean earth curvature in geodetic geometry Includes substantial additional information on precise levelling, spherical and ellipsoidal geometry, trigonometric heighting and setting out Offers a fuller description of mapping systems, including the State Plane Coordinate System This book is essential for all students of surveying and for practitioners who need a 'stand-alone' text for further reading.

This new textbook on remote sensing and digital image processing of natural resources includes numerous practical, problem-solving exercises, applications of sensors and satellite systems using remote sensing data collection resources with emphasis on free and open-source platform R. It explains basic concepts of remote sensing and multidisciplinary applications using R language and R packages, by engaging students in learning theory through hands-on, real-life projects. All chapters are structured with learning objectives, computation, questions, solved exercises, resources and research suggestions. Features 1. Explains the theory of passive and active remote sensing and its applications in water, soil, vegetation, and atmosphere. 2. Covers data analysis in free and open-source (FOSS) R platform, which makes remote sensing accessible to anyone with a computer. 3. Includes case studies from different environments with free software algorithm and R toolset for active learning and learn-by-doing. 4. Provides hands-on exercises at the end of each chapter and encourages readers to understand the potential and the limitations of the environments, remote sensing targets and process. 5. Explores current trends and developments in remote sensing in homework assignments with data to further explore the use of free multispectral remote sensing data, including very high spatial resolution data sources for target recognition with image processing techniques. While the focus of the book is on environmental and agriculture engineering, it can be applied widely to a variety of subjects such as physical, natural, and social sciences. Students in upper-level undergraduate or graduate programs, taking courses in Remote Sensing, Geoprocessing, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Geosciences, Environmental Sciences, Electrical Engineering, Biology, and Hydrology will also benefit from the learning objectives in the book. Professionals who use remote sensing and digital processing will also find this text enlightening.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First International Workshop on Mobility Analytics for Spatio-Temporal and Social Data, MATES 2017, held in Munich, Germany, in September 2017. The 6 revised full papers and 2 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 13 submissions. Also included are two keynote speeches. The papers intend to raise awareness of real-world problems in critical domains which require novel data management solutions. They are organized in two thematic sections: social network analytics and applications, and spatio-temporal mobility analytics.

One of the key geographical developments over the last two centuries has been that of urbanisation. In recent years this has exploded globally, particularly in developing countries. It is essential for governments, planners and researchers in geography and allied fields to understand this process and the main way of being able to do this is to accurately map these changes. The main method of this mapping is Remote Sensing. This up-to-date analysis of the area looks at a wide range of methodologies currently being used to produce and analyse remotely sensed data of urban areas. The authors examine the various techniques used to extract information from digital, multispectral images of urban areas. Donnay and Barnsley then go on to look at the identification of urban forms, the delineation of agglomerations and the development of urban morphology, considering the analysis of integrated data sets and surface models and going on to look at the estimation of human population levels.

This book offers an introduction to remotely sensed image processing and classification in R using machine learning algorithms. It also provides a concise and practical reference tutorial, which equips readers to immediately start using the software platform and R packages for image processing and classification. This book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces remote sensing digital image processing in R, while chapter 2 covers pre-processing. Chapter 3 focuses on image transformation, and chapter 4 addresses image classification. Lastly, chapter 5 deals with improving image classification. R is advantageous in that it is open source software, available free of charge and includes several useful features that are not available in commercial software packages. This book benefits all undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, university teachers and other remote- sensing practitioners interested in the practical implementation of remote sensing in R.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Web and Wireless Geographical Information Systems, W2GIS 2018, held in A Coruna, Spain, in May 2018. The 15 full papers included in the volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 20 submissions. They deal with theoretical, technical, and practical issues in the field of wireless and Internet technologies suited for the dissemination, usage, and processing of geo-referenced data.

This textbook aims to be a one stop shop for those interested in aerosols and their impact on the climate system. It starts with some fundamentals on atmospheric aerosols, atmospheric radiation and cloud physics, then goes into techniques used for in-situ and remote sensing measurements of aerosols, data assimilation, and discusses aerosol-radiation interactions, aerosol-cloud interactions and the multiple impacts of aerosols on the climate system. The book aims to engage those interested in aerosols and their impacts on the climate system: graduate and PhD students, but also post-doctorate fellows who are new to the field or would like to broaden their knowledge. The book includes exercises at the end of most chapters. Atmospheric aerosols are small (microscopic) particles in suspension in the atmosphere, which play multiple roles in the climate system. They interact with the energy budget through scattering and absorption of solar and terrestrial radiation. They also serve as cloud condensation and ice nuclei with impacts on the formation, evolution and properties of clouds. Finally aerosols also interact with some biogeochemical cycles. Anthropogenic emissions of aerosols are responsible for a cooling effect that has masked part of the warming due to the increased greenhouse effect since pre-industrial time. Natural aerosols also respond to climate changes as shown by observations of past climates and modelling of the future climate.

This doctoral thesis presents a novel approach to landslide risk assessment that explores the various dimensions of landslide risk in an integrated perspective. The research approach introduced here is tailored for use with landslide databases and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). A landslide susceptibility model is at the heart of this new approach, enabling to identify and delineate areas at risk of landslides and to assess infrastructure exposure. Landslide risk is a pressing societal issue that is still poorly understood. Temporal landslide hazard is derived from landslide frequency statistics and a hydrological simulation approach to estimate triggering thresholds. These methods are integrated into a powerful toolset for cost modeling that uses historical data to compile, model, and extrapolate damage costs on different spatial scales over time. The combination of this toolset with techniques to analyze fiscal cost impacts supports integrated risk assessment by quantifying the economic relevance of landslide losses.

This book is a selection of the best and peer-reviewed articles presented at the CUPUM (Computers in Urban Planning and Urban Management) conference, held in the second week of July 2015 at MIT in Boston, USA. The contributions provide state-of the art overview of the availability and application of Planning Support Systems (PSS) in the framework of Smart Cities.

These Workshop Proceedings reflect problems concerning advanced geo-information science with a special emphasis on deep virtualization for mobile GIS. They present papers from leading scientists engaged in research on environmental issues from a modeling, analysis, information processing and visualization perspective, as well as practitioners involved in GIS and GIS applications development. The proceedings examine in detail problems regarding scientific and technological innovations and deep virtualization for mobile GIS, its potential applications, and the monitoring, planning and simulation of urban systems with respect to economic trends as related to: Artificial intelligence; Knowledge-based GIS; Spatial ontologies in GIS; Positioning and analyzing moving information; Energy GIS; GIS data integration and modeling; Environmental management; Urban GIS; Transportation GIS; Underwater acoustics and GIS; GIS and real-time monitoring systems; GIS algorithms and computational issues; Data reliability and quality assurance for open data; Spatial and data quality; and lastly Open source GIS.

The aim of the conference is to present and discuss new methods, issues and challenges encountered in all parts of the complex process of gradual development and application of digital surface models. This process covers data capture, data generation, storage, model creation, validation, manipulation, utilization and visualization. Each stage requires suitable methods and involves issues that may substantially decrease the value of the model. Furthermore, the conference provides a platform to discuss the requirements, features and research approaches for 3D modeling, continuous field modeling and other geoscience applications. The conference covers the following topics: - LIDAR for elevation data - Radar interferometry for elevation data - Surface model creation - Surface model statistics - Surface model storage (including data formats, standardization, database) - Feature extraction - Analysis of surface models - Surface models for hydrology, meteorology, climatology - Surface models for signal spreading - Surface models for geology (structural, mining) - Surface models for environmental science - Surface models for visibility studies - Surface models for urban geography - Surface models for human geography - Uncertainty of surface models and digital terrain analysis - Surface model visual enhancement and rendering

Julius Schmidt was one of the finest astronomical observers of his time, and his detailed map of the Moon surpassed anything that had come before. Today, the German astronomer and geophysicist has remained a largely neglected figure, despite being one of the most important players in the history of lunar studies. This book at last makes accessible Schmidt's highly regarded German work, Der Mond. Considered an astronomical classic of the nineteenth century, Der Mond remained without a proper English counterpart for the last century and a half, until now. The author's faithful English translation provides readers with much-needed access into Schmidt's original publication, with the aim of showing the community just how vital his work and legacy have been in the international field of selenography.

This edited volume presents a collection of lessons learned with, and research conducted on, OpenStreetMap, the goal being to promote the project's integration. The respective chapters address a) state-of-the-art and cutting-edge approaches to data quality analysis in OpenStreetMap, b) investigations on understanding OpenStreetMap contributors and the nature of their contributions, c) identifying patterns of contributions and contributors, d) applications of OpenStreetMap in different domains, e) mining value-added knowledge and information from OpenStreetMap, f) limitations in the analysis OpenStreetMap data, and g) integrating OpenStreetMap with commercial and non-commercial datasets. The book offers an ideal opportunity to present and disseminate a number of cutting-edge developments and applications in the field of geography, spatial statistics, GIS, social science, and cartography.

This book delivers concise coverage of classical methods and new developments related to indoor location-based services. It collects results from isolated domains including geometry, artificial intelligence, statistics, cooperative algorithms, and distributed systems and thus provides an accessible overview of fundamental methods and technologies. This makes it an ideal starting point for researchers, students, and professionals in pervasive computing. Location-based services are services using the location of a mobile computing device as their primary input. While such services are fairly easy to implement outside buildings thanks to accessible global positioning systems and high-quality environmental information, the situation inside buildings is fundamentally different. In general, there is no simple way of determining the position of a moving target inside a building without an additional dedicated infrastructure. The book's structure is learning oriented, starting with a short introduction to wireless communication systems and basic positioning techniques and ending with advanced features like event detection, simultaneous localization and mapping, and privacy aspects. Readers who are not familiar with the individual topics will be able to work through the book from start to finish. At the same time all chapters are self-contained to support readers who are already familiar with some of the content and only want to pick selected topics that are of particular interest.

The main focus of this monograph is synthesizing the importance of geographic approaches to public health and patient care. The chapters are organized into four themed sections: the role of geography in health care reform; the geographies of human health; geospatial data and technologies; and geography in medicine. It is a highly informative book, providing scientific insight for geographers with an interest in advanced geospatial applications and health research. The author is an international expert in geography, GIS, and public health, who co-edited a special issue on "Geospatial Applications in Disease Surveillance," published in the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research. "Health, Science, and Place is a well-intentioned overview of medical geography in the context of the ACA. Blatt does an excellent job synthesizing ecologic and geographic literatures with what we know about individual health, health care systems, and public health. ... this book fills a need in the field by offering a timely discussion of the ACA and medical geography." - Jennifer L. Moss, The AAG Review of Books, Vol. 4 (2), 2016 "Amy Blatt's pioneering new book on geomedicine and its exciting capacity to promote health and minimize risk is a robust call for understanding the role of geography for everyone's quality of life. In Health, Science, and Place: A New Mode, Dr. Blatt's contributions can be summarized in three categories: comprehensive analysis, creative curating, and targeted innovations... Overall, Dr. Blatt's Health, Science, and Place: A New Model is a pathbreaking book challenging all public health and health communication scholars and practitioners to explore vigorously the role of medical geography as a shining new bridge between geography and patient care." - John C. Pollock, PhD, MPA, Professor of Health Communication and Human Rights, and Faculty Affiliate in Public Health, The College of New Jersey, Ewing, NJ

This book presents a general picture of recent research activities related to location-based services. Such activities emerged in the last years especially concerning issues of outdoor/indoor positioning, smart environment, spatial modelling, personalization and context-awareness, cartographic communication, novel user interfaces, crowdsourcing, social media, big data analysis, usability and privacy. This book is comprised of a selection of the best papers presented during the 11th International Symposium on Location Based Services, which was held in Vienna (Austria) between 26th and 28th November 2014.

"The PhD thesis written by Mr. Ackermann is an outstanding and in-depth scientific study that closes a research gap and paves the way to new developments. Despite the extremely complex issues, his work is very understandable and excellently elaborated." Prof. Dr. Christiane Schmullius "The PhD thesis written by Mr. Ackermann is an excellent and very comprehensive work performed at the highest scientific level. It examines in detail the potential of SAR data with regards to the derivation of forest stem volume in the temperate latitudes. The work belongs to a technically complex field. Nevertheless, Mr. Ackermann has succeeded in presenting the content in a clear and understandable way." Dr. Christian Thiel "The proposed document is overall of very good quality. Mr. Ackermann has done an exhaustive analysis of the in-situ data available on the Thuringian forest and was able to derive Growing Stocking Volume using L- and X-band spaceborne SAR data. The document is very well structured with a good split of information between the core of the text presented in the 6 chapters and the 4 annexes, which contain detailed results. Mr. Ackermann's English grammar is excellent and his syntax is crystal clear, making his document pleasant to read. The way arguments are presented is logical and Mr. Ackermann gives a lot of attention to ensuring that sound explanations properly support these arguments." Dr. Maurice Borgeaud

Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research is the basis for advanced Earth Observation (EO) datasets used in environmental monitoring and research. Now that there are a number of satellites in orbit, EO has become imperative in today's sciences, weather and natural disaster prediction. This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse studies on remote sensing and GIS, from a theoretical background to its applications, represented through various case studies and the findings of new models. The book offers a comprehensive range of contributions by well-known scientists from around the world and opens a new window for students in presenting interdisciplinary and methodological resources on the latest research. It explores various key aspects and offers state-of-the-art research in a simplified form, describing remote sensing and GIS studies for those who are new to the field, as well as for established researchers.

Applications, 2nd Edition focuses on moving object management, from the location management perspective to determining how constantly changing locations affect the traditional database and data mining technology. The book specifically describes the topics of moving objects modeling and location tracking, indexing and querying, clustering, location uncertainty, traffic-aware navigation and privacy issues, as well as the application to intelligent transportation systems. Through the book, the readers will be made familiar with the cutting-edge technologies in moving object management that can be effectively applied in LBS and transportation contexts. The second edition of this book significantly expands the coverage of the latest research on location privacy, traffic-aware navigation and uncertainty. The book has also been reorganized, with nearly all chapters rewritten, and several new chapters have been added to address the latest topics on moving objects management. Xiaofeng Meng is a professor at the School of Information, Renmin University of China; Zhiming Ding is a professor at the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ISCAS); Jiajie Xu is an assistant professor at the ISCAS.

Many important planning decisions in society and business depend on proper knowledge and a correct understanding of movement, be it in transportation, logistics, biology, or the life sciences. Today the widespread use of mobile phones and technologies like GPS and RFID provides an immense amount of data on location and movement. What is needed are new methods of visualization and algorithmic data analysis that are tightly integrated and complement each other to allow end-users and analysts to extract useful knowledge from these extremely large data volumes. This is exactly the topic of this book. As the authors show, modern visual analytics techniques are ready to tackle the enormous challenges brought about by movement data, and the technology and software needed to exploit them are available today. The authors start by illustrating the different kinds of data available to describe movement, from individual trajectories of single objects to multiple trajectories of many objects, and then proceed to detail a conceptual framework, which provides the basis for a fundamental understanding of movement data. With this basis, they move on to more practical and technical aspects, focusing on how to transform movement data to make it more useful, and on the infrastructure necessary for performing visual analytics in practice. In so doing they demonstrate that visual analytics of movement data can yield exciting insights into the behavior of moving persons and objects, but can also lead to an understanding of the events that transpire when things move. Throughout the book, they use sample applications from various domains and illustrate the examples with graphical depictions of both the interactive displays and the analysis results. In summary, readers will benefit from this detailed description of the state of the art in visual analytics in various ways. Researchers will appreciate the scientific precision involved, software technologists will find essential information on algorithms and systems, and practitioners will profit from readily accessible examples with detailed illustrations for practical purposes.

This book provides an extensive review of three interrelated issues: land fragmentation, land consolidation, and land reallocation, and it presents in detail the theoretical background, design, development and application of a prototype integrated planning and decision support system for land consolidation. The system integrates geographic information systems (GIS) and artificial intelligence techniques including expert systems (ES) and genetic algorithms (GAs) with multi-criteria decision methods (MCDM), both multi-attribute (MADM) and multi-objective (MODM). The system is based on four modules for measuring land fragmentation; automatically generating alternative land redistribution plans; evaluating those plans; and automatically designing the land partitioning plan. The presented research provides a new scientific framework for land-consolidation planning both in terms of theory and practice, by presenting new findings and by developing better tools and methods embedded in an integrated GIS environment. It also makes a valuable contribution to the fields of GIS and spatial planning, as it provides new methods and ideas that could be applied to improve the former for the benefit of the latter in the context of planning support systems. "From the 1960s, ambitious research activities set out to observe regarding IT-support of the complex and time consuming redistribution processes within land consolidation - without any practically relevant results, until now. This scientific work is likely to close that gap. This distinguished publication is highly recommended to land consolidation planning experts, researchers and academics alike." - Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Thomas, Munster/ Germany "Planning support systems take new scientific tools based on GIS, optimisation and simulation and use these to inform the process of plan-making and policy. This book is one of the first to show how this can be consistently done and it is a triumph of demonstrating how such systems can be made operational. Essential reading for planners, analysts and GI scientists." - Prof. Michael Batty, University College London

This book presents the latest research developments in geoinformation science, which includes all the sub-disciplines of the subject, such as: geomatic engineering, GIS, remote sensing, digital photogrammetry, digital cartography, etc.