geomatics facilities

geomatics laboratory - G.19 Cassie building

The Geomatics Lab presents an open working space to postgraduate and undergraduate students. Most PhD students working on the remote sensing, GIS, and photogrammetry and laser scanning themes are based in the lab, conducting their research amongst their other group members.

The Geomatics Lab hosts the School’s photogrammetric and laser scanning equipment, as well as a high powered virtual GIS workstation, running 3dMAX. The Geomatics Lab is supported and looked after by Mr Martin Robertson, Geomatics Technician and Dr Henny Mills, Geomatics Teaching Associate.
photogrammetry and laser scanning

Digital and analytical photogrammetric facilities are available within the Geomatics Lab. The digital photogrammetric workstation is based on the BAE software Socet Set v5.4, set-up on a dual processing computer with an NVIDIA Quadro 3500 graphics card. Stereo viewing is supported by the dual monitoring system and a stereographics emitter and shutter glasses. The digital photogrammetric workstation is used extensively for Stage 2 and 3 undergraduate teaching and research.

A Zeiss P3 analytical plotter is mainly used for the teaching of photogrammetry to Stage 2 undergraduates, and is used to orientate and overlap a pair of diapositives to enable 3D measurements and viewing.

For photogrammetric data capture, we have two Zeiss UMK metric cameras and a Wild P32 camera.

The School owns a Leica Laserscanner HDS 2500 (the rebranded Cyrax 2500 scanner), which is based on the time-of-flight measuring principle and has a range limit of 100 m. It scans with a resolution of 0.25 mm at a precision of 6 mm at 50 m. Its measurement rate is 1000 Hz.

We have recently also acquired a Leica ScanStation 2, which offers the accuracy and use of a total station, scanning up to 50,000 points per second with a stated positional accuracy of 6 mm. The ScanStation 2 is used within the School for a variety of research projects and for undergraduate teaching in Stages 2 and 3.

The scanner and digital photogrammetric workstation have been used extensively in a wide range of research projects:

* Coastal geohazard monitoring funded by EPSRC, English Heritage and BGS
* Automatic capture of 3-dimensional building data from imagery and airborne laser scanning
* Remote asset inspection for transport corridors funded by EPSRC

geodetic GPS processing and distributed computing

For geodetic GPS processing research, members of the geodesy group frequently use each of the three major geodetic GPS analysis packages, namely GIPSY v4.0, Bernese v5.0 and GAMIT v10.03 (we have full commercial licences for both GIPSY v4.0 and Bernese 5.0). These packages are installed on our own dedicated High Throughput Computing (HPC) cluster of Linux machines, based on the Condor software. Condor allows "cycle-stealing" meaning that all available computational resources are used by a particular job.

We currently have ~60 nodes in our Linux cluster although during 2008 this will be increased by a further ~50 dedicated nodes as part of our global GPS reprocessing/sea level/GIA project. We also have access, via Condor, to the university condor pool which has ~300 Linux nodes and 1300 Windows nodes. We also have the potential to apply for access to the NERC High Performance Computing (HPC) service which has ~1500 nodes running the IBM AIX operating system.
CGPS stations

We operate and maintain two CGPS stations in North-east England for geodetic research, namely the Morpeth (MORP) IGS and EUREF station whose data are freely available to anyone, and the North Shields tide gauge station whose data may be requested via the NERC BIGF facility. In 2007, a second antenna and receiver (GPS/GLONASS) were installed at Morpeth as part of the Leica Geosystems SmartNet network.
surveying and precise positioning

We own a range of survey and geodetic GPS receivers (8 Leica receivers and antennas with RTK capability). total stations, theodolites, EDMs and levels. For non-contact measurement procedures, survey grade film, digital cameras and a laser scanner are available. In addition a fast-scanning field-portable spectroradiometer is available for image classification, capable of measuring surface reflectance in the 350-2500nm wavelength range. This is accompanied by optics to suit a range of applications, including: narrow and wide angle optics for general use; contact probe for soil and geological measurements; plant probe for close-up leaf reflectance measurements.

For local scale GPS surveying processing, we have the Leica Geo Office software, whilst for remote sensing and photogrammetric processing, there are both analytical and fully digital photogrammetric plotters, in addition to scanned cloud processing packages such as TerraScan, Cyclone, ENVI and ERDAS. For large scale surveys the range of software includes standard least squares adjustment packages for survey networks including LSS, a 3D land survey modelling package, and StarNet, specifically used for network adjustment.
field spectroradiometer

For remote sensing work, we have an ASD Fieldspec Pro FR (Model A110070) field portable spectroradiometer. This is a fast-scanning field-portable spectroradiometer for surface reflectance measurements in the 350-2500 nm wavelength range, complete with optics to suit a range of applications, including:

* Narrow and wide angle optics for general use
* Contact probe for soil and geological measurements
* Plant probe for close-up leaf reflectance measurements
* Auxiliary lamp and fibre optic illuminator for indoor laboratory use
* Kodak DCS digital camera for photogrammetry

GIS and geomedia

We have a complete suite of ESRI products, comprising ArcGIS v9.1 includes ArcMap, ArcCatalog, and ArcToolbox) and ArcSDE, used to access multiuser geographic databases stored in relational database management systems (RDBMSs).. We also have the Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) Data Translater 2005 software suite.

For CAD work, we have AutoCAD, Bentley Microstation, LSS and OASYS.
Geomatics Application Centre
Geomatics Application Centre: Commercial activity and consultancy in geomatics