Research Projects
Remote sensing
Professor Philip Bones and Professor Rick Millane
Aircraft and spacecraft based remote sensing provides a cost-effective means of wide area imaging of the Earth’s surface. Also, hand-held laser scanning gives three-dimensional surface profile information on geological structures with mm accuracy. The data obtained have applications in environmental studies, land use monitoring, flood control, etc. Our research program is concerned with development of methods for analysis and interpretation of remotely sensed imagery. Techniques used include probabilistic modeling (Bayesian estimation and Markov random fields), optimisation, statistical classification, and non-linear filtering. Applications are to airborne and spaceborne synthetic aperture radar for classifying types and ages of forests, and for detecting overall seasonal trends, to airborne laser altimetry for quantitating vegetation cover in the vicinity of braided rivers, and to hand-held laser scanning for analysis of pebble size distribution and modelling of gravel river beds. Another novel project involves analysis of sailplane flight data to investigate the structure of atmospheric waves in the lee of large mountain ranges.
Left: Airborne synthetic aperture radar image (one of nine images of the same area, using three frequency bands and three polarisations) of the Kiangoroa Forest in the North Island. Centre: Classification of the ground cover from the nine images using Bayesian estimation with a Markov random field model. The colours represent bare ground (dark brown), fir trees (green/yellow), and young (light green), medium (green) and old (dark green) pine trees. Right: Correct classification from a ground survey.
Sample publications:
M. Hagedorn, P.J. Bones, Q.X. Wu and D. Pairman, Segmentation of synthetic aperture radar images. Proc. Image Vision Comput. NZ 99, 73-78 (1999).
T. Bretschneider, P.J. Bones and S.J. McNeill, Resolution enhancement using multispectral remotely sensed imagery. Proc. Image Vision Comput. NZ 99, 109-114 (1999).
P.J. Bones, T. Bretschneider, C.J. Forne, R.P. Millane and S.J. McNeill, Tomographic blur identification using image edges, Proc. SPIE, 4123, 133-141 (2000).
R.P. Millane, R.G. Brown, E. Enevoldson and J.E. Murray. Estimating mountain wave windspeeds from sailplane flight data. In "Image Reconstruction from Incomplete Data III," P.J. Bones, M.A. Fiddy and R.P. Millane (Eds.), Proc. SPIE, Vol. 5562, 218-229, 2004.
M. Qi, A. Haider, R.P. Millane and G.M. Smart. Analysis of river bed stones from digital elevation models. In "Proc. Image and Vision Computing New Zealand 2004," D. Pairman, H. North and S. McNeill (Eds.), Landcare Research, NZ, 369-373, 2004.