PARADIS: Information Management for Mine Action

The use of information management can increase mine action safety and efficiency. Indeed, mine action includes the collection of a large amount of data coming from different sources and data needed for various processing flows. An information management system enables the manager to monitor and visualise critical variables, to get an overview of the situation, to produce customised reports and to perform geospatial analysis in order to make the best decisions. For the field workers, the system offers secure data collection. A Prototype for Assisting Rational Activities in Demining using Images from Satellites (PARADIS) designed and developed between 1999 and 2007, was an early example of how such a tool may improve the planning of humanitarian demining campaigns. The prototype was designed for the SEDEE-DOVO, the Mine Clearance Service [explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) Battalion] of the Belgian Army. This tool involves a software package working from the country scale to the field scale, software embedded in a geographical information system (GIS). The system was built on two user interfaces, one for the desk office, the other, mobile, for the field. The proof-of-concept of the tool aimed at encouraging similar ideas to help both mine action centres and the various actors involved in mine action in the realisation and coordination of day-to-day activities

Research at RMA in the Evolving Context of Mine Action

The purpose of this chapter is to put the research of the Royal Military Academy (RMA) in mine action in a historical perspective by providing some background information. The vocabulary used in mine action and the landmine contamination problem are first presented. Formalisation of close‐in detection and of area reduction is then proposed. An overview of the research projects, the involved partners and the objectives as well as the list of PhDs performed at RMA are then provided. The chapter ends with an overview of the book and their link with the cited projects

TIRAMISU Final Technology Demonstration at SEDEE-DOVO

On 24 September 2015, and in the presence of Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium, the Royal Military Academy of Belgium (RMA) organized a demonstration for mine action tools in Meerdael, Belgium. At the Belgian EOD battalion premises of SEDEE-DOVO, RMA presented technology developed under the TIRAMISU project, which was co-funded by the European Union and coordinated by RMA. Designed by twenty-six different organizations, the tools covered multiple elements of mine action, including survey, operation and validation, information management, mine risk education (MRE), close-in-detection, and personnel protective equipment (PPE). Organizers held inside and outside demonstrations as well as discussions of the tools developed throughout the four-year project

PARADIS: A Prototype for Assisting Rational Activities in Humanitarian Demining Using Images from Satellites

The PARADIS project aims to improve the planning of humanitarian demining campaigns with a software package working from the country scale to the field scale. A demining organization and an image interpretation team work together to put this system to use and benefit mine-affected areas

Median Graph Shift: A New Clustering Algorithm for Graph Domain

ISSN: 1051-4651 Print ISBN: 978-1-4244-7542-1International audiencen the context of unsupervised clustering, a new algorithm for the domain of graphs is introduced. In this paper, the key idea is to adapt the mean-shift clustering and its variants proposed for the domain of feature vectors to graph clustering. These algorithms have been applied successfully in image analysis and computer vision domains. The proposed algorithm works in an iterative manner by shifting each graph towards the median graph in a neighborhood. Both the set median graph and the generalized median graph are tested for the shifting procedure. In the experiment part, a set of cluster validation indices are used to evaluate our clustering algorithm and a comparison with the well-known Kmeans algorithm is provided

Remote Sensing for Non‐Technical Survey

This chapter describes the research activities of the Royal Military Academy on remote sensing applied to mine action. Remote sensing can be used to detect specific features that could lead to the suspicion of the presence, or absence, of mines. Work on the automatic detection of trenches and craters is presented here. Land cover can be extracted and is quite useful to help mine action. We present here a classification method based on Gabor filters. The relief of a region helps analysts to understand where mines could have been laid. Methods to be a digital terrain model from a digital surface model are explained. The special case of multi‐spectral classification is also addressed in this chapter. Discussion about data fusion is also given. Hyper‐spectral data are also addressed with a change detection method. Synthetic aperture radar data and its fusion with optical data have been studied. Radar interferometry and polarimetry are also addressed

Edge-detection - What About Rotation Invariance

In this article, we consider techniques that provide edge strength at each pixel using two orthogonal directions and question their invariance with respect to a rotation

Indicators of Mine Presence: Focus on trenches

As of October 2013, some 59 states and four other areas were confirmed to bemine‐affected. Large "Suspected Hazardous Areas'', often overestimated, prevent thepopulation to use the land. In this context, aerial images provide an asset for a betterdelineation, based on indicators of mine presence (IMP) or of mine absence. Trenchesdetected thanks to their shadows are good examples of IMP. Their sparse presence over thehuge amount of images makes their detection by a photo‐interpreter an overwhelming task.We therefore propose an automatic tool based on dark line detection. In various envisagedscenarios, the most suspicious images and the detected objects are proposed to photointerpretersfor further analysis or for pre‐processing such as ortho‐photo production. Thetool is applied to the Suspected Hazardous Area of Bihac in Bosnia and Herzegovina.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Crater detection using CGC: A new circle detection method

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Indicators of Mine Presence: Focus on Trenches

Abstract: As of October 2013, some 59 states and four other areas were confirmed to be mine-affected. Large ``Suspected Hazardous Areas'', often overestimated, prevent the population to use the land. In this context, aerial images provide an asset for a better delineation, based on indicators of mine presence (IMP) or of mine absence. Trenches detected thanks to their shadows are good examples of IMP. Their sparse presence over the huge amount of images makes their detection by a photo-interpreter an overwhelming task. We therefore propose an automatic tool based on dark line detection. In various envisaged scenarios, the most suspicious images and the detected objects are proposed to photointerpreters for further analysis or for pre-processing such as ortho-photo production. The tool is applied to the Suspected Hazardous Area of Bihac in Bosnia and Herzegovina