Lecturer from Surveying Engineering department characterized by developing a new method to estimate Earth features geometry in urban and natural terrain land cover areas following an accurate normalisation routine, using aerial full-waveform laser scanning data (ALS) for calibration purposes.
A novel approach – so called RSN method for normalising full waveform (FWF) echo amplitude signals, based upon enhanced incidence angle estimation, has been developed by Dr. Fanar Mansour Abed from Surveying Engineering department. The new method accounts for Earth surface target orientation through robust normal vector estimation of individual aerial laser scanning (ALS) points. This method has shown potential to estimate the local orientation of Earth objects for feature recognition and object extraction applications. Results have shown that the developed method is more effective in eliminating discrepancies in FWF amplitude signals between overlapping flight lines than the standard methods. In comparison to standard methods, the RSN method shows significant improvements over natural surfaces with non-planar trends in addition to improvements over planar surfaces. This has been shown to be the case over both natural and man-made land cover types and within datasets of relatively high and low point density.
This normalisation approach should help to overcome the challenge of integrating ALS physical observables to improve existing segmentation approaches, thus delivering more reliable surface coverage information for a host of potential applications. The research has been applied successfully through multiple case studies selected in the UK using datasets provided by the Ordnance Survey ( the greatest mapping agency in Great Briton).
The novel technique has been adopted globally through the international IEEE society and published in the very high ranked IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING Journal in 2012.
Dr. Fanar is one of the staff members of Surveying Engineering department. She recently has received the PhD degree in Geomatic Engineering from the school of Civil Engineering and Geosciences in Newcastle University, U.K. Her research interests span the field of photogrammetry and laser scanning. At the moment, she is taking responsibilities in lecturing post and undergrad students in photogrammetry and laser scanning topic within the department of Surveying towards developing this important topic in Geomatic Engineering field in Iraq.
Paper can be found in: IEEE Xplore
