GIS expertise to the fore

Flinders University’s expertise in geospatial information systems came to the fore at this month’s Locate23 conference, a leading Australian geospatial event.

Flinders Honours student Joram Downes won Best Overall Presentation in the Young Professionals category for his talk ‘Optimising Satellite Derived Bathymetry using Multi-Spectral and Multi-Resolution Optical Satellite Imagery over the Adelaide Metro Coast’.

Joram, who completed the Bachelor of Science (Coasts and Oceans) degree through the Beach and Dune Systems (BEADs) lab at the College of Science and Engineering, says the honours project under Associate Professor David Bruce is exploring how to optimise satellite-derived bathymetry for tracking sediment transport along affected areas of the Adelaide coast, from Seacliff to Outer Harbor.

“Using experience with remote sensing, drones and GIS (Geographic Information System), I can determine the elevation of the seafloor in bare sand locations in areas less then 10m deep with optical satellite imagery (to 0.62m accuracy),” says Joram.

“As well as representing sand bars, the method shows promise as a mechanism for visualising sediment transport along the Adelaide metropolitan coast.”

The project will continue, with new ARC funding, using a UAV-mounted bathymetric LiDAR,  similar to the drone in the photo, above, to validate the data.

“The bathymetric LiDAR system has been recently purchased and should be arriving in 3-4 months,” he says.

At the conference held in Adelaide, Associate Professor Bruce presented on ‘Improving the detection of bushfire burn severity from Earth observation with Synthetic Aperture Radar, LiDAR and optical imagery’, while PhD Marcio DaSilva covered multi-platform LiDAR and other surveillance methods of plantation forestry and Dr Claire Moore spoke about ‘Encouraging spatial biologists and ecologists to use a proper GIS, not just R.’

Posted in
College of Science and Engineering Research Development and Support