Semantics-Enabled Framework for Knowledge Discovery from Earth Observation Data

Earth observation data has increased significantly over the last decades with satellites collecting and transmitting to Earth receiving stations in excess of three terabytes of data a day. This data acquisition rate is a major challenge to the existing data exploitation and dissemination approaches. The lack of content and semantics based interactive information searching and retrieval capabilities from the image archives is an impediment to the use of the data. The proposed framework (Intelligent Interactive Image Knowledge retrieval-I3KR) is built around a concept-based model using domain dependant ontologies. An unsupervised segmentation algorithm is employed to extract homogeneous regions and calculate primitive descriptors for each region. An unsupervised classification by means of a Kernel Principal Components Analysis (KPCA) method is then performed, which extracts components of features that are nonlinearly related to the input variables, followed by a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification to generate models for the object classes. The assignment of the concepts in the ontology to the objects is achieved by a Description Logics (DL) based inference mechanism. This research also proposes new methodologies for domain-specific rapid image information mining (RIIM) modules for disaster response activities. In addition, several organizations/individuals are involved in the analysis of Earth observation data. Often the results of this analysis are presented as derivative products in various classification systems (e.g. land use/land cover, soils, hydrology, wetlands, etc.). The generated thematic data sets are highly heterogeneous in syntax, structure and semantics. The second framework developed as a part of this research (Semantics-Enabled Thematic data Integration (SETI)) focuses on identifying and resolving semantic conflicts such as confounding conflicts, scaling and units conflicts, and naming conflicts between data in different classification schemes. The shared ontology approach presented in this work facilitates the reclassification of information items from one information source into the application ontology of another source. Reasoning on the system is performed through a DL reasoner that allows classification of data from one context to another by equality and subsumption. This enables the proposed system to provide enhanced knowledge discovery, query processing, and searching in way that is not possible with key word based searches

Maximising Weather Forecasting Accuracy through the Utilisation of Graph Neural Networks and Dynamic GNNs

Weather forecasting is an essential task to tackle global climate change. Weather forecasting requires the analysis of multivariate data generated by heterogeneous meteorological sensors. These sensors comprise of ground-based sensors, radiosonde, and sensors mounted on satellites, etc., To analyze the data generated by these sensors we use Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) based weather forecasting model. GNNs are graph learning-based models which show strong empirical performance in many machine learning approaches. In this research, we investigate the performance of weather forecasting using GNNs and traditional Machine learning-based models.Comment: Errors in the Results sections. Experiments are conducted to rectify the error

3D Object Detection in LiDAR Point Clouds using Graph Neural Networks

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is an advanced active remote sensing technique working on the principle of time of travel (ToT) for capturing highly accurate 3D information of the surroundings. LiDAR has gained wide attention in research and development with the LiDAR industry expected to reach 2.8 billion $ by 2025. Although the LiDAR dataset is of rich density and high spatial resolution, it is challenging to process LiDAR data due to its inherent 3D geometry and massive volume. But such a high-resolution dataset possesses immense potential in many applications and has great potential in 3D object detection and recognition. In this research we propose Graph Neural Network (GNN) based framework to learn and identify the objects in the 3D LiDAR point clouds. GNNs are class of deep learning which learns the patterns and objects based on the principle of graph learning which have shown success in various 3D computer vision tasks.Comment: Errors in the results section. Experiments are carried out to rectify the result

Semantics-Driven Remote Sensing Scene Understanding Framework for Grounded Spatio-Contextual Scene Descriptions

Earth Observation data possess tremendous potential in understanding the dynamics of our planet. We propose the Semantics-driven Remote Sensing Scene Understanding (Sem-RSSU) framework for rendering comprehensive grounded spatio-contextual scene descriptions for enhanced situational awareness. To minimize the semantic gap for remote-sensing-scene understanding, the framework puts forward the transformation of scenes by using semantic-web technologies to Remote Sensing Scene Knowledge Graphs (RSS-KGs). The knowledge-graph representation of scenes has been formalized through the development of a Remote Sensing Scene Ontology (RSSO)—a core ontology for an inclusive remote-sensing-scene data product. The RSS-KGs are enriched both spatially and contextually, using a deductive reasoner, by mining for implicit spatio-contextual relationships between land-cover classes in the scenes. The Sem-RSSU, at its core, constitutes novel Ontology-driven Spatio-Contextual Triple Aggregation and realization algorithms to transform KGs to render grounded natural language scene descriptions. Considering the significance of scene understanding for informed decision-making from remote sensing scenes during a flood, we selected it as a test scenario, to demonstrate the utility of this framework. In that regard, a contextual domain knowledge encompassing Flood Scene Ontology (FSO) has been developed. Extensive experimental evaluations show promising results, further validating the efficacy of this framework

Semantics-Driven Remote Sensing Scene Understanding Framework for Grounded Spatio-Contextual Scene Descriptions

Earth Observation data possess tremendous potential in understanding the dynamics of our planet. We propose the Semantics-driven Remote Sensing Scene Understanding (Sem-RSSU) framework for rendering comprehensive grounded spatio-contextual scene descriptions for enhanced situational awareness. To minimize the semantic gap for remote-sensing-scene understanding, the framework puts forward the transformation of scenes by using semantic-web technologies to Remote Sensing Scene Knowledge Graphs (RSS-KGs). The knowledge-graph representation of scenes has been formalized through the development of a Remote Sensing Scene Ontology (RSSO)—a core ontology for an inclusive remote-sensing-scene data product. The RSS-KGs are enriched both spatially and contextually, using a deductive reasoner, by mining for implicit spatio-contextual relationships between land-cover classes in the scenes. The Sem-RSSU, at its core, constitutes novel Ontology-driven Spatio-Contextual Triple Aggregation and realization algorithms to transform KGs to render grounded natural language scene descriptions. Considering the significance of scene understanding for informed decision-making from remote sensing scenes during a flood, we selected it as a test scenario, to demonstrate the utility of this framework. In that regard, a contextual domain knowledge encompassing Flood Scene Ontology (FSO) has been developed. Extensive experimental evaluations show promising results, further validating the efficacy of this framework

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Support vector machines regression for retrieval of leaf area index fro

Abstract Comparative Analysis of Spectral Unmixing and Neural Networks for Estimating Small Diameter Tree Above-Ground Biomass in the State of Mississippi

The accumulation of small diameter trees (SDTs) is becoming a nationwide concern. Forest management practices such as fire suppression and selective cutting of high grade timber have contributed to an overabundance of SDTs in many areas. Alternative value-added utilization of SDTs (for composite wood products and biofuels) has prompted the need to estimate their spatial availability. Spectral unmixing, a subpixel classification approach, and artificial neural networks (ANN) are being utilized to classify SDT biomass in Mississippi. The Mississippi Institute for Forest Inventory (MIFI) data base biomass (volume per acre) estimates will be used to check the accuracy and compare the two classification procedures. A suitable and accurate classification approach will be vital to understanding the spatial distribution as well as availability of SDTs and would benefit both forest industries and forest managers in proper utilization and forest health restoration