LiDAR-assisted Large-scale Privacy Protection in Street-view Cycloramas

Recently, privacy has a growing importance in several domains, especially in street-view images. The conventional way to achieve this is to automatically detect and blur sensitive information from these images. However, the processing cost of blurring increases with the ever-growing resolution of images. We propose a system that is cost-effective even after increasing the resolution by a factor of 2.5. The new system utilizes depth data obtained from LiDAR to significantly reduce the search space for detection, thereby reducing the processing cost. Besides this, we test several detectors after reducing the detection space and provide an alternative solution based on state-of-the-art deep learning detectors to the existing HoG-SVM-Deep system that is faster and has a higher performance.Comment: Accepted at Electronic Imaging 201

Towards Accurate Camera Geopositioning by Image Matching

In this work, we present a camera geopositioning system based on matching a query image against a database with panoramic images. For matching, our system uses memory vectors aggregated from global image descriptors based on convolutional features to facilitate fast searching in the database. To speed up searching, a clustering algorithm is used to balance geographical positioning and computation time. We refine the obtained position from the query image using a new outlier removal algorithm. The matching of the query image is obtained with a recall@5 larger than 90% for panorama-to-panorama matching. We cluster available panoramas from geographically adjacent locations into a single compact representation and observe computational gains of approximately 50% at the cost of only a small (approximately 3%) recall loss. Finally, we present a coordinate estimation algorithm that reduces the median geopositioning error by up to 20%

Libbie & Grove Urban Design Plan

This plan was created for the City of Richmond Department of Planning and Development Review to serve as a recommendation for urban design improvements and suggested changes to zoning ordinances for the Libbie and Grove commercial area located in the Westhampton neighborhood. To begin, an in-depth demographic analysis was conducted for the Westhampton neighborhood. Special attention was paid to socioeconomic factors and trends in census tracts directly surrounding the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor. Based on these analyses and new development occurring in the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor, we were able to allocate six sites or “study areas” as candidates for redevelopment. All of these sites represent valuable areas within the Libbie and Grove commercial corridor. The sites were selected and designed with different intentions, but aim to create a complete streetscape for the commercial area. Based on this analysis and study, it is our recommendation that a new zoning code be implemented for the Libbie and Grove commercial area in order to codify form based design requirements in order to preserve and enhance a village feel at Grove and Libbie and promote compatible future development

Dynamic privacy in public surveillance

In implementing privacy protection in surveillance systems, designers must maximize privacy while retaining the system?s purpose. One way to achieve this is to combine data-hiding techniques with context-aware policies governing access to securely collected and stored data

Synergy between public space politics and mobility strategies

¿Hasta qué punto y en qué circunstancias movilidad, como aspecto funcional e inevitable del entorno humano, se puede convertir en un elemento afirmativo de espacio público dándole un nuevo significado y un valor añadido? Diálogo entre movilidad y espacio público se puede explicar mediante la comprensión de las estrategias de movilidad como partidario de la integración de diferentes lógicas urbanas, observando infraestructura como un elemento de configuración de espacio público y al cuestionar transporte como pivote del carácter e identidad de espacio público. El objetivo principal de esta discusión es la integración urbana y contextual de los sistemas de transporte vistos como confluencias de lógica urbana y lógica de transporte desarrolladas como una sola expresión. Armonizando esta paradoja es posible crear sinergias entre espacio público y transporte que ganan nuevas dimensiones.Up to which point and under which circumstances mobility, as a functional and an inevitable aspect of the human environment, can become an affirmative element of public space giving it a new significance and an additional value? Dialog between mobility and public space can be explained by understanding mobility strategies as a supporter of integration of different urban logics, by observing infrastructure as an element of public space configuration and by questioning transport as a pivot of public space character and identity. The main focus of this discussion is on mobility lines, specifically urban and contextual integration of transport systems seen as a crossroads between urban and transport logic, developed as a single expression. Harmonizing this paradox it is possible to create synergies between public space and mobility which gain new dimensions