2nd International Summer School of University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart


"Applied Geoinformatics in Sciences and Environment"(AGSE) - was the theme of the 2nd international Summer School held at the University of Applied Sciences Stuttgart (UAS), from 12th to 17th July 2009. The main focus was on Open Source, Photogrammetry and the prevention and hazard of natural disasters. 80 participants from 20 different countries took part and attended the lecture sessions or made presentation on recent projects carried out in their countries. Besides the summer term, 2009 was the 10th anniversary of the international master course program in "Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics"; a course which most of the participants attended during their career.

Organized by Prof. Behr, responsible for the Alumni of UAS, Prof. Schröder, Course Director of the international master course program, and Prof. Pradeepkumar, professor at University College Trivandrum in Kerala, India, this one week was not just filled with lectures but also with cultural events. The events included the visit to the Opera of Karlsruhe (where "a midsummer night's dream" was performed), a gathering for dinner including a performance of the so called "Theater in der Westentasche" (theater inside the pocket), and a guided tour through Stuttgart and finally a trip to the Infoterra Company in Constance. These activities helped the participants in getting to know each other and the environment better. Also it gave the chance to exchange ideas, information about the ongoing development, efforts and achievements in the main topics of photogrammetry, ecology, alumni experiences, internet technology and georeferenced data, as well as in personal matters. This exchange of information was one of the main intentions of the summerschool - it was supposed to help understand the development and experiences which others gained in different countries, with different working methods and conditions.

Organizations like inter alia the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), ensured the success of the summer school by providing financial support for the participants and also for the university to arrange board and lodging.


Monday, 13th July 2009

The plenary session was held with a speech by the vice-president of the university, Prof. Dr. Huep, and a speech by Prof. Schröder covering the 10th anniversary of the master course program and the welcoming of the alumni who will be attending the summerschool with presentations of their own or just informing themselves about the progress in the geoinformatics development in other nations. Besides welcoming, presentations and coffee, the participants also had the honor to listen to different pieces on the concert harp by Birke Falkenroth. Also two presentations were part of the welcoming.

The first presentation was made by Dr. Pradeepkumar on the topic "globalization and internationalization in education". The main point of this presentation was to show the success of US by offering an education, which attracts people all over the world and also due to the medium of teaching language adopted. In brief it can be said, that German universities should put more effort in the extension of the international courses so that more foreigners can apply for the courses. This extension would provide an advantage on both sides as internationalization improves the education, though internationalization is not a precondition for education.

The second presentation, by Prof. Kai Holschuh, dealt with the topic "Towards a clearer understanding of globalization". In short - globalization is becoming more and more important in our society, but it is not just causing advantages. In addition to those advantages, just like a better understanding of other nations and working conditions, it causes certain constrains - constrains which represent a combination of economy, technology, politics and society.

After a short interruption for technical IT instructions and lunch, the first 4 sessions of the summerschool commenced. For better time management and to enable everyone to attend his/her own field of interest, there were always 2 sessions running parallel. However, the participants had to choose between the sessions of interest.

  1. Disaster and risk management, Millenium Goals

    1. Risk management challenges in El Salvador (Metzi Aguilar)
      Landslide and floodareas need to be monitored by municipalities, using GIS, to ensure that poverty doesn't increase in rural areas which are affected by these disasters.
    2. A Disaster Management Protocol for Kerala (A. P. Pradeepkumar)
      The invented system has two aims - first to prevent disasters, and second to pre-warn or respond very fast if a disaster is happening/happened.
    3. Field mapping for supporting of Disaster Management (Bernard Wright)
      How can field mapping be used for the support of Disaster Management?
    4. Spatial-Temporal Modelling in Projects Monitoring and Evaluation (Laura Nibladze)
      A program to assist the MCG in monitoring the processes made to reduce the poverty through economic growth in the regions outside the capital city of Georgia.

  2. Internet Services

    1. Mashups (Franz-Josef Behr)
      Why are geo-mashups important? An explanation of the basic technology and services behind the mashups as well as the used formats and their data structure was given in this presentation.
    2. GeoRSS and other Georelated Encodings (Detlev Wagner, Rita Zlotnikova)
      What are the main geotagging formats available today? The presentation is about XML-based standards (GML, KML, etc) as well as others like GeoJSON or WKT format.
    3. SUAS MapServer (Hui LI, Franz-Josef Behr)
      SUAS, on the one hand, is a framework for supporting extended Web Map Services which present geodata and store it in DBMS; but it is also a community platform in which users can create and share their own collection of geodata.

  3. Photogrammetry

    1. Hot spot detection and monitoring (B. Pradhan)
      Early warnings and faster extinguish of fires are very important to avoid major disasters close to forests. Those endangered locations are identified through satellite images and early warnings are provided by usage of remote sensing and GIS.
    2. The provision of DOP-Maps in color for land use planning (Godwin Yeboah)
      This presentation informs about the achievements in obtaining Maps, produced out of colored DOPs for Land Use Planning projects in Ghana.
    3. Color characterization for digital aerial cameras (Susanne Scholz)
      How can 'International Color Consortium' profiles for input devices like digital cameras be created? The color characterization of aerial cameras is an important point if it comes to building images out of mosaics which are taken from different data sources. The quality of colors can be improved by several methods and adjusted in multiple images.
    4. High Quality Range Image Registration on Complex 3D Shapes (H. Zheng, D. Saupe)
      To get an efficient and high quality surface registration on large and complex 3D shapes, the focus is on using 2 types of scanned data instead of just 1 type. The support of global and local shape information in this context is obligatory. Global 3D shape data with its low resolution is used for the structure, local 3D shape data with high resolution for the surface. This method is efficient, as only geometric spatial information, no texture information are used.

  4. Hazard prevention and management

    1. Remote Sensing and GIS in flood risk and vulnerability assessment (d.c. Roy, T. Blaschke)
      Remote Sensing and GIS technologies, in combination with satellite images, are those methods, which can be used for an effective disaster management. And can be used for different concepts and methods in organizations just like UN-SPIDER and UNOSAT.
    2. Geological Structures in GIS based landslide hazard zonation (G. Jayathissa, D.Schröder, E. Fecker)
      With GIS the indirect methods of landslide hazard zonation - either statistical or deterministic models are used to predict landslide-prone areas, based on information obtained from the interrelation between landscape factors and landslide distribution - have become more popular. GIS has the capacity to handle and analyze data with high spatial variability. How can GIS capabilities be used efficiently to integrate the effect of structural attitudes?
    3. Managing floods in the Kano Plains using GIS (C.O. Gaya, M.K. Gachari, J.M. Gathenya)
      The Kano plains in the eastern Lake Victoria basin have regions where floods have caused lots ofdestruction and human suffering. Due to this, a simple hydrologic model for that basin is developed, which uses a GIS user interface and has an integrated geospatial database to be used as a flood management tool. The usage of GIS provides tools for a visual interpretation and evaluation.
    4. Usefulness of Addressable Radio in emergency disaster preparedness (Affifa Imtiaz, Md.Z.H Siddiquee)
      The Addressable Radio for Emergency Alert is an early warning system which receives its information through radio waves. The informations are received at the warning centers through satellites and then published. This means that the information can be received anywhere at any time.

Tuesday, 14th July 2009

Tuesday's conference started with a keynote address by Osayande Omokaro. He gave a report about the immense problems in the Niger Delta Region (Nigeria), caused by national oil and gas trade.

Before the social gathering could start in the evening, the following topics were presented:

  1. Geospatial Data Infrastructure, eCadastre

    1. Implementation of E-Cadastre in Malaysia (Mohd Rozi Latib)
      The aim of the Malaysian government is to digitalize the whole Cadastre for Malaysia by the year 2015. Therefore all land parcels were registered through accurate surveying methods. Reason for this change is that the current system is unable to capitalize on the advent of satellite based technology.
    2. Development of a GIS Application for Land Valuation and Fee Collection in Mongolia (A. Pureysuren)
      One of the main reasons for realizing this project is to establish a proper valuation system for the property value according to the market prices so that the tax collection will become more dynamic.
    3. Getting Returns on Investment on Digital Geospatial data (H.M. Lehmkuehler)
      Geodata can be distributed like other digital data - and in some cases the price of Geodata is important for GIS professionals: if we want to offer services and have to use foreign Geodata which might be free or non-free.
    4. The Potential of using the Earth Gravitational Potential Model EGM2008 for Geoinformatics Applications in Sri Lanka (P. G.V. Abeyratne)
      The potential of the high resolution EGM derived with satellite and terrestrial gravity is used for applications in Sri Lanka, where the standard deviation in the height anomaly makes it impossible to use normal GPS leveling.

  2. Internet Technology, Open Source

    1. Publication of Energy Consumption Data of Scharnhauser Park via Web GIS (Md. Z. H. Siddiquee, A. Strzalka, U. Eicker)
      GIS should help with the analysis on the buildings energy consumption, as they can be visualized in different ways - for example online through a WebGIS or through thematic maps.
    2. uDig - An overview of Open Source Desktop GIS application (Abdurasyid Moestofa, Sandra Tress)
    3. Open Source GIS In Cadastral Geospatial Data Bank Development of Coastal Zone , Border Zone, Small Island and Specific Region (WP3WT) (Asep Yusup Saptari)
      To prepare attributes and spatial application systems for land registration and to develop a land ownership database, satellite images and information technology to support the landreform policy should be used by the implementation through GIS.
    4. Web GIS Based 3D Visualization of Geospatial Data, Nalani (Hetti Arachchige)
      3D geospatial data visualization in web browsers is helpful, as it ensures and supports an easy understanding of the analytical results, offered by spatial data analysis in GIS. Therefore a novel solution that allows 3D visualization of geospatial data as a VRML model was developed.

  3. Environment

    1. Modeling Land Collapse Hazard using remotely sensed Data and GIS in the Egyptian Terrain (M.Hegazy, H. Effat)
      The output of a land collapse risk index map depends on 5 input parameters which are taken from different remotely sensed data of different sensors using GIS software. Over this index map, layers like main roads and urban settlements can be overlaid, so that land use planning decisions can be made more efficient
    2. Deformation Analysis of a Landslide using Continuum Mechanics and Interpolation Methods (Paul Rawiel)
      To monitor and analyze deformations of different objects, for example buildings or rocks, several mathematical methods can be used for interpolation out of single point measurements. These allow the calculation of deformation at any time.
    3. GIS-based optimization for the locations of wastewater Treatment plants (E. A. S. K. Ratnapriya, R. P. De Silva)
      To protect the water, which is used for domestic, agricultural and industrial purposes is important and has to be ensured. For ensuring this protection, wastewater treatment systems are important. For these systems, GIS based decision support enable us to better understand the existing situation.

  4. Alumni Experiences

    1. Entrepreneurship in Geoinformatics: Deploying Technologies over Opportunities (Sajid Pareeth)
      Geoinformatics is a fortrunner, especially in almost developed countries - the number of government funded projects in GIS increases and so it becomes more and more important to know and be able to implement current technological trends in a cost effective way for success.
    2. Geospatial technology trend: Extracting reality of developing world (India) (S. Singh Yadav)
      GIS is a powerful tool for decision makers and becomes more and more useful for every-day-usage in India, though recently it was just on interest for the government.
    3. Some experiences after graduation from HFT (Godwin Yeboah)
      Some work experiences in the field of GIS after graduating from HFT
    4. Endeavours after MPG Graduation (Naomi Estherlina, Wilda Litaay)
      In some environments, the use of geoinformatics and photogrammetry is hardly known and appreciated. If that is the case and want to continue in this field, networking and cultural experiences, which were also made at HFT, are most important.

Wednesday, 15th July 2009

The next keynote on the "New developments in Photogrammetry" was presented by Josef Braun, working for INPHO GmbH in Stuttgart. Within the last 150 years, photogrammetry has developed from analog to analytical to digital photogrammetry. The advantage of this new digital photogrammetry, according to Mr. Braun, is the high sensibility and accuracy which results in sharp high-quality pictures. Due to the fact that film cameras are almost vanished from the market, digital cameras have become more and more popular.

  1. LIDAR, 3D

    1. 3D Navigation Systems based on Synthetic Texturing (Behnam Alizadehashrafii)
      Navigation systems are important for every-day-use. Therefore PDAs and smart phones can be used as direct pedestrians based on synthetic texturing along with 3D modeling, which allows having a better understanding for the visualized data.
    2. Two representative Projects on LiDAR Processing in China (Wenjuan Qi)
      An introduction about the situation of development of LiDAR and current LiDAR projects in China.
    3. LiDAR Data Visualization Using IDL and ENVI Image Processing and Analysis Routines for the Campus Area of University of Calgary (N.I. El Hamed)
      How to model and visualize LiDAR data, using programming procedures.
    4. LiDAR Technologies for Effective Watershed Modeling and Hurricane Disaster Management (M.Taner Aktas)
      Airborn LiDAR data collection technologies as well as the enhancements in Arc Hydro model allow calculating watershed parameters effectively. This effectiveness, visualized in a GIS, is used to update floodplains to show hurricane risk areas during hurricane season.

  2. GI for the society

    1. Geo-Informatics in Sri Lanka (V. P. A. Weerasinghe)
      Since 2004, after the tsunami, the application of Geoinformatics has been significantly developed and nowadays, traditional disciplines like surveying and cartography are replaced by GPS and GIS. Reasons are the easy handling of digital data, the possibility to analyze complex data and to visualize aspects of spatial data.
    2. Development of an administration-wide Geographical Information System for agricultural Applications (S.Brand, M. Schulz, Aitana Zambrana)
    3. Maximizing Benefits of Comprehensive Geographic Information System (C-GIS ) for the Nepalese Society (Toya Nath Baral)
      Geoinformatics is definitely one way to make human life easier and more secure. It helps in managing unavoidable natural disasters by its facilities for real time mapping of those disasters and in-time management through space technology applications.
    4. MPG as a way to start building GIS professional experience (Nijole Lukyte)

  3. Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing

    1. A region based approach to Image classification (Lonesome Moonga Malambo)(d.c. Roy, T. Blaschke)
      For carrying out image classification by using MATLAB software, a region based approach is done. This study uses the spectral information as well as the spatial information of an input image.
    2. Historical documentation in San Agustin (Huila), world heritage utilizing photogrammetry techniques. Case study: Statue "Triangular face" (William Barragan)
      This study is about the documentation of the "Triangular Face" Statue in San Agustin, which was geometrically documented using close range Photogrammetry.
    3. Creating Cadastral Maps in Rural and Urban Areas using High Resolution Satellite Imagery (M. Alkan, A.M. Marangoz)
      This study outlines the advantages and disadvantages of QuickBird and IKONOS imagery for the production of cadastral maps in different study areas.
    4. Aerial survey with a Gyrocopter (A. Miraliakbari, M.Hahn, J. Engels)
      In short it can be said that Photogrammetry is an expensive technology - these costs are caused by the flight, cameras, GPS etc. Due to this also the outcome material like DOPs or DTMs are costly. This study has the aim to reduce those mentioned costs, using more economical air vehicles like the 'gyrocopter'. The prototype system for recording aerial images is presented, including first results.

  4. Geospatial Data Infrastructure, eCadastre

    1. Nationwide spatial base data acquisition and provision - Implementation process in developing countries under the aspect of data actuality and quality (Claudia Specht-Mohl)
      Spatial information is indispensable for planning and decision making if it comes to sustainable development and poverty reduction. Therefore data is needed, which consists of basic reference information, like the NSDI, for allowing institutions to develop thematic spatial data sets for usage on their own fields.
    2. Standards and Services in the Geospatial Arena, SDI and OGC Services (Christian Kiehle, Hanko Ruhbach)
      For companies it is possible to create Open Source products without going under - but for ensuring efficiency, standardization of the used geoinformation is important - this is ensured by organizations like the OGC.

Thursday, 16th July 2009

The last day of the lecture session started with a keynote by Prof. Dr. Matthias Möller, Professor at the University of Bamberg - "Uniform Geo-data Infrastructures (GDI) - Challenges for the Information Society". He explained the importance, to publish information through several networks, so that this information is available from each location 24/7.

The following sessions and lectures took place on this last day:

  1. Geospatial Data Infrastructure, eCadastre

    1. Registration Database for Surveying and Land Management Companies in Mongolia (D.Tserensangi)
      This study describes the 'unified registration database' which was created in order to monitor human resources and surveying equipment to ensure, that land rehabilitation companies must have geodetic specialists with work experience.
    2. Geographical Names for Cartographic Purposes in Morocco (F. Meryem, N.)
      Like geodata, also names of geographic locations must be standardized - the spelling must be the same on each map. As many names exist for centuries and are spelled in the local dialect, it is even more important to find the true name of the geographic location - which just then can be represented accurately and correctly on maps.
    3. Current status and challenges in establishing NSDI in Vietnam (Hang Minh Tran)
      In Vietnam, framework data is commonly used in extensive and varied fields - for that reason they must be built according to basic geographic data standards. This challenge is established in NSDI which is discussed in this study.
    4. Determining Spatio-Temporal Requirement for a Cadastral Temporal Geographic Information System (TGIS) of Turkey (M. Alkan, Ç. Cömert)
      'Land title and cadastral data' is a traditional system which is manually archived. Due to this manual archiving, temporal analyses needed cannot be performed in a rapid and reliable way. This study deals with the advantages, disadvantages and structure of this traditional system.

  2. Natural resources management and monitoring

    1. Monitoring Developments in Irrigation Network - A Quad 'S' Approach (Muhammad Farooq)
      Official records or entire irrigation networks in Pakistan are kept in paper based maps and registers which are difficult to handle and analyze - also the lack of regular updates cause immense problems if it comes to planning the water household in a better way. Therefore a system was invented which should improve the handling of water resource management
    2. Irrigation Infrastructure Information Management System (IIIMS) (H. Gadain, Gabriel Vincent Sanya)
      GIS for the management of irrigation infrastructure in Somalia is a difficult task, which can just be handled by experts. However, an increasing demand for this irrigation data can be registered - that is the reason for creating a system that provides accurate, not too complex, information in this study.
    3. Strategic and Operational Asset Management for a Water Distribution System (Yolla Alasmar)
      Due to the recent economical and ecological development, water distribution management becomes more and more important. Here, asset management can be used to gain the best delivery of services through efficiently managing those assets.
    4. Identification and Mapping of Spatial Distribution of Floating Aquatic Plants in Tanks using Remote Sensing and GIS, (S. Wadduwage, S. Sivanandarajha, J. Gunathilake)
      RS and GIS can contribute to avoid invasions and eradicate control established invasive floating aquatic plants, which can happen through mapping its distribution and areas at risk of invasion.

  3. Sustainable development

    1. Surveying Tourism potential for sustainable development in Bolivia - Case Study "Represa de la Angostura" (Mirka Rodríguez de Zimmermann)
      Regional spatial analysis from a tourist point of view as well as empirical data research methods are used for gaining knowledge about culture and nature spatial factors which do exist in the study area and are influenced by tourism. Therefore GIS is used to support different phases due to the different kinds and sources of information required for the input.
    2. Monitoring and mapping of mining and exploration licenses for Mongolia (Munkhbileg Jamsranjav)
      Data collection in certain areas/places is restricted and prohibited by the authorized government. However, regularly, this data is published by a governmental department and must be stored for further usage. For this task, a GIS was created to store the mentioned data which can be produced and analyzed for business purposes later on.
    3. Cartographic Modeling and Multi Criteria Evaluation for Exploring the Potentials for Tourism Development in the Suez Governorate, Egypt (H.Effat, M. Hegazy)
      Spatial planning, especially if it comes to desert zones, is complicated because technical knowledge and decision makers' visions of the upcoming society must be coordinated. This can be done by regional scale zoning maps which are created through cartographic modeling. In this study, the potential of such models, for providing answers about the suitability of such projects for tourism development, are explained.
    4. FAUNAFRI - Online GIS to assess and evaluate distributions of fresh and brackish waters fish species in Africa, (Rainer Zaiss)

  4. Hazard prediction, flood modelling

    1. Development of a CityGML ADE for dynamic 3D flood information (Claudia Schulte)
      Highly spatial related information can be presented online to ensure a better understanding through its visualization; however, the problem is the huge diversity of proprietary hydro-numerical software systems the data is taken from. In this study, it is shown that CityGML is a good basic for providing 3D semantic models.
    2. Drought Risk Assessment using Remote Sensing and GIS to alleviate poverty. A case study of the Oshikoto region in Namibia (F. Persendt)
      In this study, the evaluation of satellite based and meteorological drought indices for the spatial and temporal detection as well as fsor the monitoring of drought conditions is shown.
    3. An effective Flood Monitoring System using GIS Tools and Remote Sensing Data (B. Pradhan)
      In this study, a flood monitoring system, using RS and GIS, was created to improve the efficiency of flood disaster monitoring and management.
    4. Solar Panel Calculation (Md. Nazmul Alam)
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