Kickoff email

[Droege, Sam]

All

We are all linked by an interest in using digital photography (including digitized historic photographs) to repeatedly track changes.

Our group at USGS (which designs monitoring techniques and programs) has worked only on a small technical feature of the large topic area...which is how to rectify digital pictures so that pictures taken on different days with different cameras and slightly different perspectives can be standardized.  These standardized pictures allow them to be made into slide shows, time-lapse video, or used to take direct measurements of some sort of change from within the picture.

There are many reasons that groups may want to have and analyze such photos from strictly scientific (i.e., measures of phenology, vegetation change, satellite ground truthing), to social justice (i.e., documentation of destruction, urban growth, illegal activities), to purely recreational (i.e., geocaching, education, history, regional photo tours), to monitoring programs (i.e., wateshed societies, parks, coastal change).

What I think (which very likely not what other people think) is most important is the development of tools sets to house (publicly or privately) cloud based picture storage, online tools for display and analysis, a web-based means for people to participate and find photostations, and an ability for individual groups and researchers to access that information if released by the participants.  These would be tools that all of us could use but still maintain the integrity of our individual projects and programs (a private to creative commons sort of situation of data release)

I believe that funding for such things would be available from public and private groups.  I also think that the federal government is probably not the best place to house and manage such data (for many reason) and exclude my group for those same reasons.

There are other reasons to talk about techniques, projects, and the potential for collaboration so don't want to limit discussions...but I do have my eye on the big picture needs at this point.

I am personally willing to help (as much as my talents are able) people create a larger network or simply chat about techniques.

Feel free to respond and please include include a link to your group so that we can get a sense of where you are coming from.

Thanks

sam

Sam Droege  sdr...@usgs.gov                     
w 301-497-5840 h 301-390-7759 fax 301-497-5624
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
BARC-EAST, BLDG 308, RM 124 10300 Balt. Ave., Beltsville, MD  20705
Http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov

The Inward Morning
          Packed in my mind lie all the clothes
               Which outward nature wears,
          And in its fashion's hourly change
               It all things else repairs
      -Henry David Thoreau    

  

--

Bees are Not Optional

مکھیوں اختیاری نہیں ہیں

[Annette Schloss]

Hi Sam,

 I am very interested in the area of rectifying digital pictures -- have you had success?   I have been playing around with Hugin, but would be interested in collaborating with USGS on adding the capability to the picture post (picturepost.unh.edu) database.  Can we talk?

thanks,

-Annette

[Jeffrey Warren]

Hi, Annette - for non GIS folks, we've had a lot of success with MapKnitter.org, a Public Lab project. It prompts users for image uploads, then allows intuitive rubber-sheeting to manually align an image. It's not as precise as auto-rectification, but is fantastic for engaging a larger non-expert community in directly generating remote sensing data. As a result, Public Lab is a source for Google Earth/Maps: http://goo.gl/maps/LB9xI

Best,

Jeff

--
An open source community for collaborative development of change monitoring systems, tools and applications. People can do this right now using existing materials at single sites or they can organize networks of camera stations at scales of parks, cities, watersheds, counties, states, countries, or the world.
 
This is a presentation of an idea. Anyone can modify this in any way they like and implement it at any scale. No copyrights. No permissions needed. Just Do It.
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[Annette Schloss]

Hi Jeffrey,

 the MapKnitter looks promising.  I just saw your Public Lab Kickstarter project for IR cameras (and joined).  That is so exciting! With picture post, we have been wanting to add IR for a long time to create NDVI and compare with satellite imagery.    I was not aware of Public Lab, you are doing some nice work.  

[Jeffrey Warren]

Glad you like it -- it looks like Will Ward is already trying to develop an infragram approach to Picture Post, i came across this a couple hours ago: http://publiclab.org/notes/wward1400/06-05-2013/infragram-panoramas-on-nasa-picture-post