Katie Chute

Going into the fall semester of my Remote Sensing Diploma I was unsure of what was coming, but then once the courses started and once I got to know my classmates it just made everything that much better. During the fall semester, the courses that I took were Emerging Technologies in Remote Sensing and Advanced Positioning Systems.

The Emerging Technologies in Remote Sensing course was all about the sensors and how they work in the Remote Sensing field. The sensors that were looked at are as follows: High Spatial Resolution, Medium and Low Spatial Resolution, Commercial UAV (Drone), SAR Application and Analysis, Polarimetric SAR, Multispectral Sensors, Hyperspectral Sensors, and Thermal Sensors. Once all the sensors had been discussed, I was tasked with seeing how the sensors could be applied to a specific field of interest.  Here is the link to where you can find the work that was done for this term project. http://chutekatie2010.wixsite.com/rs-naturaldisasters .

The second course that I took during the fall semester was the Advanced Positioning Systems. This course is an introduction to carrier-phase Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) as it applies to establishing geodetic control and performing topographic surveys. I learned all about the theoretical and technical skills necessary to process and analyze GNSS data as commonly required by the Remote Sensing industry. During this course time was spent both in the field gaining practical experience with the GNSS systems and in the office doing post-processing the data that has been collected.

 

Once successfully getting through the fall semester, I was ready to take on the Winter Semester. During the winter semester, the courses that I took are as follows: Advanced Digital Image Processing, Remote Sensing term Project, Digital Aerial Photography, LiDAR Applications, LiDAR Operations, and Softcopy Photogrammetry. The Advanced Digital Image Processing course was all about using satellite images in combination with Python scripting to create the final product depending on the assignment.  I used python scripting to create a single mosaic image out of three images. Creating a 3D Terrain Visualization by using two different software’s Global Mapper and FLY.  Those are just a couple of the assignments that were completed will taking this course. The next course is the Remote Sensing Term Project course, during this course I was tasked with finding a client and a project related to remote sensing.  I found a client with Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM), I was asking to take LiDAR data and create Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) for each water supply area watershed that my client want to focus on, then he also wanted me to create new water boundaries from these newly created DEMs and compare them to the original that CBRM created. So, the deliverables that my client wanted were five DEMs, five new watersheds, five new watershed boundaries, and also a walk through report taking you through the steps from the start of the project to the end of the project. The Softcopy Photogrammetry course is all about using Agisoft Photoscan to generate georeferenced dense point clouds, textured polygonal models, digital elevation models, and orthomosaics from a set of overlapping images with corresponding referencing information.  The Digital Aerial Photography course is all about taking what was done in Agisoft Photoscan and taking it into TerraSolid and TerraPhoto. The LiDAR Applications course consisted of taking airborne LiDAR data that was collected over Fredericton, New Brunswick and clean up the points, then create 3D buildings from that data and the final product would to display the buildings over the DEM and DSM. The second lab is to go through the three hydrological procedures. The LiDAR Operations course was all about learning a new software and playing around with LiDAR data (point cloud data).

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The spring semester is almost over and I have learned so much in just these couple of weeks. The first thing is I have never used before and I was excited to use was the Faro Scanner, which creates 3D point clouds of the object that you are scanning, it also takes colour images of the object that you are scanning. It was easier to use then I thought, and bringing it into the software SCENE, editing and deleting unwanted points was MUCH easier than I first thought. I would not mind using that machine for the rest of my career! The object that we scanned was the Theresa E. Conner boat that was in dry dock out in Lunenburg. The second thing that we scanned out in Lunenburg was the zwickers wharf; then the third thing that was scanned out in Lunenburg was the public wharf.

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Overall, the fall and winter semesters have been an eye opening experience and I would not change it for anything. I am so happy that I came back for the second Diploma; I have learned so much and I have met so many new people, of whom I would not have met if I did not come back.