Author: smathermather

My primary interest is in understanding ecological processes in a synoptic fashion. This has led me down a long study with Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing as they relate to ecology and biological processes.
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OpenDroneMap in Côte d Ivoire for UR Afrique de l ouest et centrale and State of the Map Africa

I had the pleasure a couple weeks ago of attending the sibling conferences Understanding Risk West and Central Africa and State of the Map Africa in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) a few weeks ago. It included a nice mix of formal discussions of how to reduce risk in light of climate change, as well as discussions of all aspects of OpenStreetMap efforts. The conferences were … Continue reading OpenDroneMap in Côte d Ivoire for UR Afrique de l ouest et centrale and State of the Map Africa

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Shaded elevation model in green and purple
3D, OpenDroneMap

Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights (part 3)

Background I have been giving a lot of thought to sustainable ways to handle self calibration of cameras without undue additional time added to flights. For many projects, I have the luxury of spending a little more time to collect more data, but for larger projects, this isn’t a sustainable model. In a couple of previous posts (this one and this one), we started to … Continue reading Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights (part 3)

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3D, Camera Calibration, OpenDroneMap, Optics, Photogrammetry

Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights (part 2)

(Modified excerpt from the OpenDroneMap docs) In a previous post on camera calibration, we discussed the possibility of setting up calibration flights that have the following characteristics: non-parallel (converging) flightlines of 20° with a 5° forward facing camera (assuming 0° is nadir). With OpenDroneMap’s –camera parameter, we can thus import camera models from a calibration flight and use that in a more efficiently flown “traditional” … Continue reading Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights (part 2)

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3D, OpenDroneMap, Photogrammetry

Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights

(Modified excerpt from the OpenDroneMap docs) Calibrating the Camera Camera calibration is a special challenge with commodity cameras. Temperature changes, vibrations, focus, and other factors can affect the derived parameters with substantial effects on resulting data. Automatic or self calibration is possible and desirable with drone flights, but depending on the flight pattern, automatic calibration may not remove all distortion from the resulting products. James … Continue reading Self Calibration of Cameras from Drone Flights

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Other

Wrasseling with the Passel

American Red Cross International Services Division continues their development of Portable OpenStreetMap, or POSM, in the latest 0.9 release. The concept is simple: use the full ecosystem of OpenStreetMap tools and sibling projects to deliver better geospatial data for aid and recovery wherever Red Cross goes. In the case of integration of OpenDroneMap, the challenge has been one of compute power: how does one, for … Continue reading Wrasseling with the Passel

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3D, Drone, Kerala, OpenDroneMap, Photogrammetry, UAS

Kole Wetland Canal Mapping with ClusterODM

My friends and collegues at International Center for Free and Open Source Software in Kerala, India have done a pretty interesting and massive mapping initiative over Thrissur Kole Wetlands. The wetlands are a massive 30,000+ acre area that are both important to wildlife and provide rice production. Suman Rajan, Asish Abraham, and Deepthi Patric (left to right in image below) mapped 9000 acres of it. … Continue reading Kole Wetland Canal Mapping with ClusterODM

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Database, Other, PostGIS, PostgreSQL, SQL

Tracing golden monkeys through time

My collegue TUYISINGIZE Deogratias (“Deo) and others at Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International have been studying golden monkeys (Cercopithecus kandti) in Rwanda. Golden monkeys are an endangered monkey along the Albertine Rift (including the Virungas, host to the endangered mountain gorilla). They are also cute as can be, but more on that another time. Deo has been leading efforts to track the golden monkeys in … Continue reading Tracing golden monkeys through time

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Other, QGIS

Latitude and Longitude of projected points in QGIS

Often one has points in QGIS in a given coordinate system and wants them in latitude and longitude for various reasons. Solutions I have used in the past included converting to WGS84 EPSG:4326 and then using the field calculator in QGIS to calculate X and Y values for Longitude and Latitude respective, exporting to CSV while projecting to 4326, or pulling into PostGIS and writing … Continue reading Latitude and Longitude of projected points in QGIS

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