Z_GIS Cooperating with Royal University of Bhutan

The Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS and the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB) commemorate a decade of academic cooperation by jointly organising a week of Geospatial events in Bhutan. The celebration began with a 3-day Faculty Development Workshop on 'Geospatial Methodology for Assessing Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Traditional Economy in Bhutan' (GeoM-4-CCAS) at the College of Natural Resources (CNR), Lobeysa on 30th March, 2015 and concluded on 3rd April with the completion of a 2-day Conference and Exhibition 'Climate Change, Environment and Development in Bhutan' (CCED_Bhutan) organised in the RUB Convention Hall at Thimphu.
 

The GeoM-4-CCAS workshop was conducted within the framework of a research project co-funded by the Commission for Development Research (KEF), Austria where 15 participants took 'hands-on' practical training of identifying, processing and analysing various types of GIS and Remote Sensing data related to Climate Change and Traditional Economy of Bhutan, and validated various scenarios of adaptation strategies. The workshop was delivered by a team of 4 experts including Dr. Shahnawaz and Dr. Gudrun Wallentin (both from Z_GIS), Mr. Ugyen Thinley and Ms. Ugyen Yangchen (both from CNR).

The CCED_Bhutan Conference and Exhibition was co-funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) Coordination office located in Thimphu. The event provided a common platform to about 100 participants from academics, industry and organisations for sharing their Geospatial knowledge and practices as well as for disseminating the outcomes of the GeoM-4-CCAS project. Mr. Dorji Wangchuk (Director General, CNR) delivered the welcome address and  the 'Guest of Honour' Ms. Christine A. Jantscher (ADC Resident Coordinator), inaugurated the conference and exhibition. During the concluding session, the dignitaries and participants highly appreciated 26 presentations given over 6 sessions and 23 posters displayed in the exhibition section.

Prof. Josef Strobl (Head, Z_GIS) has been leading the cooperation between Z_GIS and RUB since 2005 and Dr. Shahnawaz (Director UNIGIS S/E Asia) is coordinating the activities. The 2 institutions have implemented 2 research projects, 8 Geospatial Faculty Development Workshops and 2 conferences in Bhutan over the last 10 years.

Both the institutions have committed to enhance the cooperation and expand the activities further!

The EDC 'Best Student Award' goes to: Robin Wendel!

As an ESRI Development Center, Z_GIS every year has the opportunity to nominate one top student based on his or her software development competence. This year this special honour is awarded to Robin Wendel for his MSc Thesis based on the development of an Interactive Network Assessment Tool for Evaluating Bicycle Infrastructure.

Mr. Wendel has addressed a timely and critically important topic in his Master thesis: Road safety is a core element of any bicycle mobility promotion strategy. In order to provide a basis for evidence-based decisions and improvement measures, as a first step the bicycle safety of a road network needs to be assessed. Up to now, this safety assessment used a-priori defined input parameters and weights. The definition and calibration of these settings require a huge effort and expertise in spatial data modelling and often result in an averaged assessment result not considering specific local or environmental circumstances (e.g. urban vs. rural).


The web tool developed by Mr Wendel facilitates interactive selection and calibration of input parameters by domain experts. The results of any parameter changes are immediately displayed, controlled and  updated online. With this, the original assessment procedure can be adapted to a dynamic process, making the results more transparent and comprehensible. Additionally, it becomes obvious which specific measures contribute to which extent to the overall safety measure of each road segment. Thus the tool is perfectly suited for simulation and planning purposes. In his thesis, Mr. Wendel demonstrated advanced skills and competences in the areas of spatial data modeling, indicator based analysis, geodatabase design, and web-based application development using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript.

Congratulations to this distinction, and to continuing a tradition of excellence established by previous recipients of this award (Mariana Belgiu, Bernhard Vockner, Christoph Mayerhofer, Caroline Atzl and Eva-Maria Schönauer), thus serving as an outstanding role model for future generations of Geoinformatics students in Salzburg!

Erasmus Mundus PostDoc scholarships: EU to CA

Invitation to apply for a 6 months Erasmus Mundus ‘gSmart’ PostDoc scholarship at a CA partner university: http://em-gsmart.zgis.net/ca-partner-contacts, if you have a genuine interest in GIScience and research in Central Asia. A detailed research/work plan and established contact to the host university is a necessary requirement. In addition to individual research activities, Postdoc scholars will be involved in co-teaching and team teaching at host universities.

>> more information: http://em-gsmart.zgis.net/ > PostDoc: EU to CA

Brown bag seminars

We are pleased to announce our next two brown bag seminars.

Date: Tuesday, March, 10th, 2015; 12:30 – 13:30 

Place: Techno-Z, Z_GIS-meeting room: SC30EG0.E07 (Schillerstraße 30, building 15, ground floor)


Presenter: Emilia Cojoc (PhD candidate, Department of Systems Ecology and Sustainable Development, University of Bucharest)

Title: Spatial connectivity effects on mountain grassland biodiversity and carbon storage 

The effects of spatial connectivity on biogeochemical processes and biodiversity dynamics is relatively poorly understood. We address the influence of bacterial community and plant species diversity on carbon storage and primary productivity for different types of boundary conditions. We quantify total carbon in soil and vegetation in semi-natural mountain grassland connected to forested landscape in the Carpathian Mountains. We also evaluate plant species diversity, plant biomass and quantify cellulolytic bacteria in soil. This allows us to test the hypothesis that higher spatial connectivity enhances plant diversity and consequently carbon storage and primary productivity. 

Presenter: Ovidiu CSILLIK (PhD candidate – 1st year, West University of Timisoara, Romania, supervisor: Dr. Lucian Dragut), CEEPUS stay (1st March – 30th April 2015)

Title: Improving image segmentation results with automated refinement of objects

Increasing spatial resolution of remote sensing imagery has led to challenges of extracting meaningful information thereof. While methods for objective parameterization of image segmentation have recently been proposed, over- and under-segmentation still remains an issue for parts of the target image objects, therefore identification and further refinements of these objects are necessary. We implemented an automated tool for refinement of image objects within the eCognition software, that takes into account and reduce the effects of the main errors of image segmentation: over- and under-segmentation. Promising results were obtained by applying the tool on various datasets (WorldView-2, QuickBird and DSM). The tool proposed has the potential to improve the quality of segmentation as well as the classification accuracy and it can be successfully applied as a continuation of ESP2 tool, for refining the automated extracted objects.

AMaN-himal Workshop in Nepal!

The GIScience Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Interfaculty Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS, University of Salzburg, Austria and Tribhuvan University (TU), Kathmandu, Nepal cooperated in organising a regional workshop on 'GIS Applications for Assessing and Managing Natural Hazards in the Himalayas (AMaN-himal)' in Kathmandu, Nepal from 22 to 27 February, 2015.

Dr. Shahnawaz (Z_GIS) and Prof. Krishna Poudel (TU) coordinated this workshop hosted by the Central Department of Education (CED-TU). Designed as an advanced GIS training supported by the Eurasia-Pacific Uninet (EPU), the event brought together 19 teachers, students and practitioners from Nepal, Bhutan, India and Austria.

The opening ceremony adorned by various dignitaries from TU was chaired by the Head of CED-TU, Prof. Shiva Sharan Maharjan. He highlighted the previous academic activities conducted jointly by the GIScience Commission, Z_GIS and TU and expressed appreciation for the continuous support extended by the EPU. The participants attended a series of lectures covering the concepts of natural hazards in the Himalayas and applications of Geospatial Science and Technologies for assessing and managing these in an effective manner. They took intensive practical 'hands-on training' of ArcGIS software for processing and analysing various types of relevant GIS and Remote Sensing data.

The TU Vice Chancellor, Prof. Hira Bahadur Maharjan, conveyed in his message after the closing ceremony that he interacted with the participants who voiced a high level of satisfaction about their learning outcomes within the short period of one week. He expressed thanks to GIScience, Z_GIS and EPU for conducting this Second International Workshop focussing on GIScience faculty development at TU and envisaged to expand academic cooperation with Z_GIS.