Geo-rectification and cloud-cover correction of multi-temporal Earth observation imagery

Over the past decades, improvements in remote sensing technology have led to mass proliferation of aerial imagery. This, in turn, opened vast new possibilities relating to land cover classification, cartography, and so forth. As applications in these fields became increasingly more complex, the amount of data required also rose accordingly and so, to satisfy these new needs, automated systems had to be developed. Geometric distortions in raw imagery must be rectified, otherwise the high accuracy requirements of the newest applications will not be attained. This dissertation proposes an automated solution for the pre-stages of multi-spectral satellite imagery classification, focusing on Fast Fourier Shift theorem based geo-rectification and multi-temporal cloud-cover correction. By automatizing the first stages of image processing, automatic classifiers can take advantage of a larger supply of image data, eventually allowing for the creation of semi-real-time mapping applications

Principles and methods of scaling geospatial Earth science data

The properties of geographical phenomena vary with changes in the scale of measurement. The information observed at one scale often cannot be directly used as information at another scale. Scaling addresses these changes in properties in relation to the scale of measurement, and plays an important role in Earth sciences by providing information at the scale of interest, which may be required for a range of applications, and may be useful for inferring geographical patterns and processes. This paper presents a review of geospatial scaling methods for Earth science data. Based on spatial properties, we propose a methodological framework for scaling addressing upscaling, downscaling and side-scaling. This framework combines scale-independent and scale-dependent properties of geographical variables. It allows treatment of the varying spatial heterogeneity of geographical phenomena, combines spatial autocorrelation and heterogeneity, addresses scale-independent and scale-dependent factors, explores changes in information, incorporates geospatial Earth surface processes and uncertainties, and identifies the optimal scale(s) of models. This study shows that the classification of scaling methods according to various heterogeneities has great potential utility as an underpinning conceptual basis for advances in many Earth science research domains. © 2019 Elsevier B.V

On Martian Surface Exploration: Development of Automated 3D Reconstruction and Super-Resolution Restoration Techniques for Mars Orbital Images

Very high spatial resolution imaging and topographic (3D) data play an important role in modern Mars science research and engineering applications. This work describes a set of image processing and machine learning methods to produce the “best possible” high-resolution and high-quality 3D and imaging products from existing Mars orbital imaging datasets. The research work is described in nine chapters of which seven are based on separate published journal papers. These include a) a hybrid photogrammetric processing chain that combines the advantages of different stereo matching algorithms to compute stereo disparity with optimal completeness, fine-scale details, and minimised matching artefacts; b) image and 3D co-registration methods that correct a target image and/or 3D data to a reference image and/or 3D data to achieve robust cross-instrument multi-resolution 3D and image co-alignment; c) a deep learning network and processing chain to estimate pixel-scale surface topography from single-view imagery that outperforms traditional photogrammetric methods in terms of product quality and processing speed; d) a deep learning-based single-image super-resolution restoration (SRR) method to enhance the quality and effective resolution of Mars orbital imagery; e) a subpixel-scale 3D processing system using a combination of photogrammetric 3D reconstruction, SRR, and photoclinometric 3D refinement; and f) an optimised subpixel-scale 3D processing system using coupled deep learning based single-view SRR and deep learning based 3D estimation to derive the best possible (in terms of visual quality, effective resolution, and accuracy) 3D products out of present epoch Mars orbital images. The resultant 3D imaging products from the above listed new developments are qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated either in comparison with products from the official NASA planetary data system (PDS) and/or ESA planetary science archive (PSA) releases, and/or in comparison with products generated with different open-source systems. Examples of the scientific application of these novel 3D imaging products are discussed

shoreline detection capability of cosmo skymed and high resolution multispectral images

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Detection And Classification Of Buried Radioactive Materials

This dissertation develops new approaches for detection and classification of buried radioactive materials. Different spectral transformation methods are proposed to effectively suppress noise and to better distinguish signal features in the transformed space. The contributions of this dissertation are detailed as follows. 1) Propose an unsupervised method for buried radioactive material detection. In the experiments, the original Reed-Xiaoli (RX) algorithm performs similarly as the gross count (GC) method; however, the constrained energy minimization (CEM) method performs better if using feature vectors selected from the RX output. Thus, an unsupervised method is developed by combining the RX and CEM methods, which can efficiently suppress the background noise when applied to the dimensionality-reduced data from principle component analysis (PCA). 2) Propose an approach for buried target detection and classification, which applies spectral transformation followed by noisejusted PCA (NAPCA). To meet the requirement of practical survey mapping, we focus on the circumstance when sensor dwell time is very short. The results show that spectral transformation can alleviate the effects from spectral noisy variation and background clutters, while NAPCA, a better choice than PCA, can extract key features for the following detection and classification. 3) Propose a particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based system to automatically determine the optimal partition for spectral transformation. Two PSOs are incorporated in the system with the outer one being responsible for selecting the optimal number of bins and the inner one for optimal bin-widths. The experimental results demonstrate that using variable bin-widths is better than a fixed bin-width, and PSO can provide better results than the traditional Powell’s method. 4) Develop parallel implementation schemes for the PSO-based spectral partition algorithm. Both cluster and graphics processing units (GPU) implementation are designed. The computational burden of serial version has been greatly reduced. The experimental results also show that GPU algorithm has similar speedup as cluster-based algorithm

Applications of SAR Interferometry in Earth and Environmental Science Research

This paper provides a review of the progress in regard to the InSAR remote sensing technique and its applications in earth and environmental sciences, especially in the past decade. Basic principles, factors, limits, InSAR sensors, available software packages for the generation of InSAR interferograms were summarized to support future applications. Emphasis was placed on the applications of InSAR in seismology, volcanology, land subsidence/uplift, landslide, glaciology, hydrology, and forestry sciences. It ends with a discussion of future research directions