Exercise: Principles of drone-based remote sensing

In this exercise we will cover the basics of drone-based remote sensing. Theoretical basics on law, weather and operations, sensors and drone platforms, flight planning and data acquisition will be covered, as well as practical data analysis using the example of data acquired in the course. The course is intended for landscape ecologists in the Bachelor and Master program.

Seminar: UAV’s applications and perspectives

The usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as mobile sensor platforms is constantly increasing in the scientific as well as in the civilian domain. A variety of requirements evolve from upcoming mission tasks like documentation, surveying and inspection in geosciences as well as in industry. Many use cases like the creation of orthoimages or the inspection of industrial plants need geoinformatic input, both in real-time and postprocessing. But also UAV flight controls and vehicle/sensor behaviour are driven by informatic and robotic processses. The seminar deals with the most important aspects of UAV scenarios since selected topics are analysed, presented and discussed by the students themselves.

Seminar: Processing and Analysis Workflows for UAS-Borne Spatial Data

This project seminar aimed at developing open and reproducible workflows for processing and analysis of very high-resolution imagery acquired by UAS. Participants explored the use of free and open source software (FOSS) and Docker technology to create workflows covering the complete processing chain of an ecological study from the raw data to the final analysis results. The experiments provided valuable insights into the potential but also the constraints of the applied tools.

Course: Unmanned Aerial Systems for Applied Research

In this course, the students will use such platforms to monitor the conservation process of the renaturated river Aa in the South of Münster. Therefore, small working groups will:

• evaluate the progress of renaturation efforts by applying different techniques, sensors, and data processing approaches
• develop a webgis for presenting all collected data, the analysis, and the results
• create a new visualization technique to explore the river in an aerial, immersive, video experience

This course will combine aspects of geoinformatics and landscape ecology in an interdisciplinary program, including real-time data processing, deploying geoservices, aerial photography and video recordings.