Research Award for Sander Oude Elberink
Enschede, the Netherlands, 24 September 2009
The ITC Research Award 2009 was awarded to Sander Oude Elberink for his article 3D information extraction from laser point clouds covering complex road junctions. Sander received the award at the opening ceremony of ITC’s academic year 2009-2010.
The article 3D information extraction from laser point clouds covering complex road junctions appeared in the Photogrammetric Record (2009) and was co-authored by professor George Vosselman.
With the growing complexity of the urban region traditional flat maps are no longer sufficient. There is a growing need for 3D information on buildings and infrastructure. Laser data from the air or from street level are an important source of such information. As the urban environment is developing fast efficient methods are required to update this information frequently. Sander Oude Elbrink designed a method to do exactly that.
His approach is based on updating a 3D model by laser altimetry observations. It is innovative and gives promising results. It uses standard image processing techniques (such as region growing of objects) to generate a 3D model of a road flyover. This makes it possible to generate spatial representation of multi layered traffic nodes, such as the Prins Clausplein near The Hague.
The jury put a question mark with the significance of the method - especially for less developed countries. But especially in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America we see that the fast process urbanisation implies the growth of cities with increasingly complex 3D developments. And one could very well envisage that the recent devastating flood in Istanbul and the frequent floods in a city like Jakarta caused by topographical barriers due to uncontrolled developments, could have been anticipated and managed much better if high-resolution laser altimetry data were available.
This year ITC received ten papers from seven different authors. A shortlist of three papers was made by a panel comprising one academic board member per scientific department. The three nominated papers were considered by a jury, chaired by ITC rector Martien Molenaar. The main criteria comprise innovation, scientific level, and practical significance.
The ITC Research Award is presented annually to the best ISI publication by a PhD candidate at ITC, written in the context of his/her PhD studies. The award consists of a certificate, and Euro 1000 in cash.