Monday 30 November 2015

SCS Merger Finalised

The merger of the IIS and the SCSI is now complete. After a few kick-off meetings and the members meet last week things are starting to get moving again, great to see. A recent article in Irish Construction Magazine announcing it to a wider audience.



I'll be pushing ahead with the transfer of the old IIS Remote Sensing Working Group, anyone interested in helping just email/post here. First thing on the agenda will be looking at getting some of the bigger University RS and GIS modules accredited - the graduates of these all end up working in Geomatics, but don't have a proper home as of yet.

Time to remedy that.

Thursday 19 November 2015

Colour: The Spectrum of Science

There is an excellent programme on BBC4 of late, Wednesday evenings - very clearly illustrating the science of the EM spectrum, how we evolved to see various colours, etc.




The presenter gives a very clear explanation of exactly how vegetation reacts with the visible portion of the spectrum here at about 9mins to 11mins in, should be shown to all RS students.

Tuesday 17 November 2015

Bathymetry Paper Published

Another one up on the board! We had a paper entitled, "Spatial Prediction of Coastal Bathymetry Based on Multispectral Satellite Imagery and Multibeam Data" published in Remote Sensing a few weeks ago. The test area was Dublin bay. If you can get sediment free conditions in a satellite image then satellite bathymetry really is an exciting solution and we used spatial regression algorithms to improve the accuracy of the satellite derived bathymetric surface model.



This paper was a collaboration between Xavier Monteys from the GSI, Paul Harris (ex StratAG) and Silvia Caloca from ICARUS and it was the study that provided the incentive to follow up with the SFI Industry Fellowship  with TechWorks Marine in 2013. Some excellent plot libraries in R and my co-authors were very familiar with them - I can honestly say it is the best looking paper I have been an author on yet.

Thursday 12 November 2015

Pyramids

No, not the type you are regularly hounded into, 'drawing' in most RS packages.

Quite a few references to the pyramids in the news recently but I was interested to see all the hardware they are applying to the latest round of surveys - thermal and LiDAR amongst them. I had no idea what a, 'muon' was. Also considering the latest news  wouldn't it be ironic/funny (and add quite alot of fuel to the fire) if it was old stores of fermenting grain!!



Monday 9 November 2015

Drones, Data X Conference - Westport

Maynooth and the NCG had a presence at the Drones, Data X Conference in Westport last Friday. 



We had one of the exhibitor booths and both Tim McCarthy and myself went over for the Friday session with the Falcon, Bramor, some display monitors and 4 pop-up stands. After a (very) early start and long, dark drive with nothing but Marty Whelan for company we were set-up ready for the first attendees by 8am. 



We were kept busy for most of the rest of the day by attendees asking questions about uses of drones at the University, the sensor hardware or interested in forming links. Lots of very interesting questions - such a wide range of applications being developed. I can honestly say I have never answered so many questions about our work, it is amazing the difference having the stand made when compared to the usual, 'coffee and danish' conversations in a tight corner of a room while trying not to get food on your face/in your teeth. Maybe something to consider for again. Oddly, we were the only drone operator in the room with a fixed-wing - VTOLs were predominant. 


Lots of other interesting exhibitors there: videographers, GNSS receiver manufacturers, drone retailers, drone insurance, training, tourism, 3D Printing ( I told them my tale of woe about my shipwreck adventure, turns out they had done it properly with a DEM of the Lusitania). The usual 'its a small world' of Geomatics theme popped up, as I was sitting having a sandwich and soup with a good friend's cousin.

My regrets from the day are:

1. Not getting a chance to attend any of the talks - I was kept busy at the stand.
2. Not wangling one of the lovely 2016 drone photography calendars from iFly.
3. Not leaving an angry note on the dash of the person who parked me in delaying me from starting the long trip home - that is you silver Citroen!

It ran for two more days I think and I also did my bit for the Mayo tourist board, giving two Americans over from Nevada the hard-sell on the Westport Greenway and the cycle to Achill.

About Me

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My name is Conor. I am a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. These few lines will (hopefully) chart my progress through academia and the world of research.