Dr. Preston Hartzell joins NCALM and the Geosensing Systems Engineering & Sciences faculty as a Research Assistant Professor. Preston earned his Ph.D. (2016) from University of Houston and his B.S. (2004) from Pennsylvania State University. His doctoral dissertation focused on using terrestrial laser scanning intensity to enhance terrestrial hyperspectral image shadow restoration.

Preston will be working closely with Dr. Craig Glennie and the USACE Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory on related work in instrument and data calibration and multi-instrument integration.

Two students from the Geosensing Systems Engineering & Sciences (GSES) graduate program recently defended their Ph.D. dissertations. Preston Hartzell defended on, "Active and Passive Sensor Fusion for Terrestrial Hyperspectral Image Shadow Detection and Restoration." The dissertation broke new ground in the application of radiometrically calibrated laser scanning intensity for enhancing existing and new shadow restoration techniques within fused hyperspectral imagery. The developed techniques demonstrated sub-pixel image shadow detection and enabled accurate recovery of spectral information within shadowed areas for improved image classification results. The work extends the value of terrestrial laser scanning information in sensor fusion applications beyond the currently employed spatial dimension into the spectral domain.

Xiao Zhang defended on, "Lidar Based Change Detection for Earthquake Surface Ruptures." Significant damage due to earthquakes, coupled with poor comprehension of the mechanism of earthquake surface ruptures, requires the ability to rapidly characterize 3D deformation over large areas to study stress change on faults and after-slip activity. Earlier studies showed the potential of obtaining displacement fields by differencing repeat lidar scans; however, the overall methodology has not received sufficient attention, and optimal methods of estimating 3D displacement from airborne laser scanning were needed. In Xiao's dissertation, a new solution, the Anisotropic Iterative Closest Point (A-ICP) algorithm, and a new partition scheme known as a “moving window,” with the innovate use of anthropogenic features, were proposed to handle the large spatial scale point cloud coverage and to deliver local, varying surface deformation near the fault, while overcoming the difficulties associated with sparse legacy pre-event datasets.

Preston has accepted a position as a Research Assistant Professor in the GSES program, at the University of Houston, where he will be continuing his work in sensor fusion and error modeling. Xiao will be working for the Shell Exploration and Production Company, in Houston, TX, as a Geomatics Specialist. Dr. Craig Glennie was advisor to both students.

Congratulations, Preston and Xiao!  

The 2015 winners of NCALM's seed proposal program have been selected. Seven students will have their projects mapped by NCALM. Congratulations to the winners and their advisors! Read the full announcement here.

There have been several print and online articles written in the last few months focused on discovering "lost" cities in Central America, airborne archaeological lidar mapping, and ground exploration at archaeology sites. Many of these papers discuss projects which NCALM has been involved in during the past six years. In the current issue of American Scientist, three NCALM researchers published an article about "Archaeology from the Air." The essay offers the unique perspective of the mapping engineer/scientist and covers the history and technological advances of lidar for use in archaeology.

The feature about "the most significant new technology to be introduced to archaeology since radiocarbon dating" can be read here.