Large-scale Weakly Supervised Learning for Road Extraction from Satellite Imagery

Automatic road extraction from satellite imagery using deep learning is a viable alternative to traditional manual mapping. Therefore it has received considerable attention recently. However, most of the existing methods are supervised and require pixel-level labeling, which is tedious and error-prone. To make matters worse, the earth has a diverse range of terrain, vegetation, and man-made objects. It is well known that models trained in one area generalize poorly to other areas. Various shooting conditions such as light and angel, as well as different image processing techniques further complicate the issue. It is impractical to develop training data to cover all image styles. This paper proposes to leverage OpenStreetMap road data as weak labels and large scale satellite imagery to pre-train semantic segmentation models. Our extensive experimental results show that the prediction accuracy increases with the amount of the weakly labeled data, as well as the road density in the areas chosen for training. Using as much as 100 times more data than the widely used DeepGlobe road dataset, our model with the D-LinkNet architecture and the ResNet-50 backbone exceeds the top performer of the current DeepGlobe leaderboard. Furthermore, due to large-scale pre-training, our model generalizes much better than those trained with only the curated datasets, implying great application potential

Post-analysis of OSM-GAN Spatial Change Detection

Keeping crowdsourced maps up-to-date is important for a wide range of location-based applications (route planning, urban planning, navigation, tourism, etc.).We propose a novelmap updatingmechanism that combines the latest freely available remote sensing data with the current state of online vector map data to train a Deep Learning (DL) neural network. It uses a GenerativeAdversarial Network (GAN) to perform image-to-image translation, followed by segmentation and raster-vector comparison processes to identify changes to map features (e.g. buildings, roads, etc.) when compared to existing map data. This paper evaluates various GAN models trained with sixteen different datasets designed for use by our change detection/map updating procedure. Each GAN model is evaluated quantitatively and qualitatively to select the most accurate DL model for use in future spatial change detection applications

Label Efficient 3D Scene Understanding

3D scene understanding models are becoming increasingly integrated into modern society. With applications ranging from autonomous driving, Augmented Real- ity, Virtual Reality, robotics and mapping, the demand for well-behaved models is rapidly increasing. A key requirement for training modern 3D models is high- quality manually labelled training data. Collecting training data is often the time and monetary bottleneck, limiting the size of datasets. As modern data-driven neu- ral networks require very large datasets to achieve good generalisation, finding al- ternative strategies to manual labelling is sought after for many industries. In this thesis, we present a comprehensive study on achieving 3D scene under- standing with fewer labels. Specifically, we evaluate 4 approaches: existing data, synthetic data, weakly-supervised and self-supervised. Existing data looks at the potential of using readily available national mapping data as coarse labels for train- ing a building segmentation model. We further introduce an energy-based active contour snake algorithm to improve label quality by utilising co-registered LiDAR data. This is attractive as whilst the models may still require manual labels, these labels already exist. Synthetic data also exploits already existing data which was not originally designed for training neural networks. We demonstrate a pipeline for generating a synthetic Mobile Laser Scanner dataset. We experimentally evalu- ate if such a synthetic dataset can be used to pre-train smaller real-world datasets, increasing the generalisation with less data. A weakly-supervised approach is presented which allows for competitive per- formance on challenging real-world benchmark 3D scene understanding datasets with up to 95% less data. We propose a novel learning approach where the loss function is learnt. Our key insight is that the loss function is a local function and therefore can be trained with less data on a simpler task. Once trained our loss function can be used to train a 3D object detector using only unlabelled scenes. Our method is both flexible and very scalable, even performing well across datasets. Finally, we propose a method which only requires a single geometric represen- tation of each object class as supervision for 3D monocular object detection. We discuss why typical L2-like losses do not work for 3D object detection when us- ing differentiable renderer-based optimisation. We show that the undesirable local- minimas that the L2-like losses fall into can be avoided with the inclusion of a Generative Adversarial Network-like loss. We achieve state-of-the-art performance on the challenging 6DoF LineMOD dataset, without any scene level labels

Deep Learning for Aerial Scene Understanding in High Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery from the Lab to the Wild

Diese Arbeit präsentiert die Anwendung von Deep Learning beim Verständnis von Luftszenen, z. B. Luftszenenerkennung, Multi-Label-Objektklassifizierung und semantische Segmentierung. Abgesehen vom Training tiefer Netzwerke unter Laborbedingungen bietet diese Arbeit auch Lernstrategien für praktische Szenarien, z. B. werden Daten ohne Einschränkungen gesammelt oder Annotationen sind knapp

Remote Sensing for Land Administration 2.0

The reprint “Land Administration 2.0” is an extension of the previous reprint “Remote Sensing for Land Administration”, another Special Issue in Remote Sensing. This reprint unpacks the responsible use and integration of emerging remote sensing techniques into the domain of land administration, including land registration, cadastre, land use planning, land valuation, land taxation, and land development. The title was chosen as “Land Administration 2.0” in reference to both this Special Issue being the second volume on the topic “Land Administration” and the next-generation requirements of land administration including demands for 3D, indoor, underground, real-time, high-accuracy, lower-cost, and interoperable land data and information

Proceedings, MSVSCC 2015

The Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) of Old Dominion University hosted the 2015 Modeling, Simulation, & Visualization Student capstone Conference on April 16th. The Capstone Conference features students in Modeling and Simulation, undergraduates and graduate degree programs, and fields from many colleges and/or universities. Students present their research to an audience of fellow students, faculty, judges, and other distinguished guests. For the students, these presentations afford them the opportunity to impart their innovative research to members of the M&S community from academic, industry, and government backgrounds. Also participating in the conference are faculty and judges who have volunteered their time to impart direct support to their students’ research, facilitate the various conference tracks, serve as judges for each of the tracks, and provide overall assistance to this conference. 2015 marks the ninth year of the VMASC Capstone Conference for Modeling, Simulation and Visualization. This year our conference attracted a number of fine student written papers and presentations, resulting in a total of 51 research works that were presented. This year’s conference had record attendance thanks to the support from the various different departments at Old Dominion University, other local Universities, and the United States Military Academy, at West Point. We greatly appreciated all of the work and energy that has gone into this year’s conference, it truly was a highly collaborative effort that has resulted in a very successful symposium for the M&S community and all of those involved. Below you will find a brief summary of the best papers and best presentations with some simple statistics of the overall conference contribution. Followed by that is a table of contents that breaks down by conference track category with a copy of each included body of work. Thank you again for your time and your contribution as this conference is designed to continuously evolve and adapt to better suit the authors and M&S supporters. Dr.Yuzhong Shen Graduate Program Director, MSVE Capstone Conference Chair John ShullGraduate Student, MSVE Capstone Conference Student Chai

Exhumed Fluvial Deposits: New Paleohydrological Tools Indicate Long-Duration Fluvial Activity on Early Mars

Fluvial sinuous ridges are common landforms on Mars that have been used for interpreting the history of ancient martian rivers. They are typically interpreted as eroded casts of an ancient river at a snapshot in time. However, some ridges might instead be channel belts that preserve river history, leading to significant differences in interpretation of paleohydrology, including flow direction, duration, and discharge. In this thesis, I used analog sites on Earth and techniques from fluvial sedimentology and fluvial geomorphology to determine that many ridges are exhumed channel belts, and to create and apply new tools for measuring bankfull discharge and duration of river flow from remote-sensing observations of these sedimentary deposits. I found evidence that rivers on ancient Mars were comparable in size to those on Earth today, and that they flowed for at least millions of years. I examined sinuous ridges in three terrestrial sites to better understand ridges on Mars: the Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation and Jurassic Morrison Formation of Eastern Utah, and the Miocene Caspe Formation of Northeast Spain. Ridges at all sites are capped with sandy units rich with dune and bar strata atop a mudstone pedestal and they cross each other at different stratigraphic levels, observations that together indicate that ridges are channel belts exhumed from floodplain sediments — the most common arrangement of fluvial stratigraphy. By compiling measurements of hundreds of terrestrial channel belts and their associated channels, I found that the best methods to reconstruct paleochannel bankfull geometry from such deposits are to use thickness of channel belts (1-4 times paleochannel depth) or radius of curvature of lateral accretion sets (half the channel width). Ridge width and planview wavelength, common proxies for paleochannel width, are significantly more uncertain due to channel amalgamation and ridge erosion by scarp retreat, which I quantified with geometry and a new erosion model. Intermittency factor converts bankfull discharge to average discharge, enabling measurement of duration of river flow. I calculated the intermittency factor for 206 fluvial deposits and USGS streamgages, and found that it ranges between 0.003-0.7 with a median of 0.10, with values depending on the ratio of catchment-averaged erosion rate to average precipitation but independent of timescale, river size, climate, or grainsize. Throughout the work, I applied the methods to sinuous ridges on Mars to demonstrate their applicability. I found that many ridges are likely channel belts, and that the ancient rivers they represent are likely smaller but longer than previously studies have indicated. Altogether, this contribution enables new quantitative analyses of ancient rivers on Earth and Mars, and provides evidence that ancient Martian climate was capable of supporting liquid water at many locations across the surface for at least millions of years.</p

Visual Impairment and Blindness

Blindness and vision impairment affect at least 2.2 billion people worldwide with most individuals having a preventable vision impairment. The majority of people with vision impairment are older than 50 years, however, vision loss can affect people of all ages. Reduced eyesight can have major and long-lasting effects on all aspects of life, including daily personal activities, interacting with the community, school and work opportunities, and the ability to access public services. This book provides an overview of the effects of blindness and visual impairment in the context of the most common causes of blindness in older adults as well as children, including retinal disorders, cataracts, glaucoma, and macular or corneal degeneration

Systematic Approaches for Telemedicine and Data Coordination for COVID-19 in Baja California, Mexico

Conference proceedings info: ICICT 2023: 2023 The 6th International Conference on Information and Computer Technologies Raleigh, HI, United States, March 24-26, 2023 Pages 529-542We provide a model for systematic implementation of telemedicine within a large evaluation center for COVID-19 in the area of Baja California, Mexico. Our model is based on human-centric design factors and cross disciplinary collaborations for scalable data-driven enablement of smartphone, cellular, and video Teleconsul-tation technologies to link hospitals, clinics, and emergency medical services for point-of-care assessments of COVID testing, and for subsequent treatment and quar-antine decisions. A multidisciplinary team was rapidly created, in cooperation with different institutions, including: the Autonomous University of Baja California, the Ministry of Health, the Command, Communication and Computer Control Center of the Ministry of the State of Baja California (C4), Colleges of Medicine, and the College of Psychologists. Our objective is to provide information to the public and to evaluate COVID-19 in real time and to track, regional, municipal, and state-wide data in real time that informs supply chains and resource allocation with the anticipation of a surge in COVID-19 cases. RESUMEN Proporcionamos un modelo para la implementación sistemática de la telemedicina dentro de un gran centro de evaluación de COVID-19 en el área de Baja California, México. Nuestro modelo se basa en factores de diseño centrados en el ser humano y colaboraciones interdisciplinarias para la habilitación escalable basada en datos de tecnologías de teleconsulta de teléfonos inteligentes, celulares y video para vincular hospitales, clínicas y servicios médicos de emergencia para evaluaciones de COVID en el punto de atención. pruebas, y para el tratamiento posterior y decisiones de cuarentena. Rápidamente se creó un equipo multidisciplinario, en cooperación con diferentes instituciones, entre ellas: la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, la Secretaría de Salud, el Centro de Comando, Comunicaciones y Control Informático. de la Secretaría del Estado de Baja California (C4), Facultades de Medicina y Colegio de Psicólogos. Nuestro objetivo es proporcionar información al público y evaluar COVID-19 en tiempo real y rastrear datos regionales, municipales y estatales en tiempo real que informan las cadenas de suministro y la asignación de recursos con la anticipación de un aumento de COVID-19. 19 casos.ICICT 2023: 2023 The 6th International Conference on Information and Computer Technologieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3236-