Schedule

This schedule is tentative, and will be updated as the semester progresses. I started to compile a list of project ideas.

WEEK	DATE	TOPIC
0	9/4	Class intro. Unix tutorial. Notes: introGIS | Unix warmup
1	9/9	Warm-up: Unix, Emacs/Vim, C, compiling and debugging. Notes: Basics I | Using make | Emacs and vim | C 101 | Basics II Assignments: a1 (due Tue 9/15) | a2 (due Tue 9/22)
	9/11
2	9/16	Spatial data models and representation. Notes: Data models and representation
	9/18
3	9/23	Flow on terrains (flow direction, flow accumulation, river networks, watersheds, basins, flooding). Notes: Flow on terrains.pdf Assignment: a3 (due Thu 9/25) | a4 (due Thu 10/2)
	9/25
4	9/30	Visibility on terrains. Notes: Visibility on terrains.pdf Assignment: a5 (due Thu 10/15)
	10/2
5	10/7	Terrain simplification (grid-to-tin). Notes: Terrain simplification.pdf Reading: Fast polygonal approximations of terrain and height fields (Garland and Heckbert 1995)
	10/9
6	10/14	FALL BREAK
	10/16	Terrain simplification
7	10/21	Projects: Project ideas | Proposals
	10/23
8	10/28	Project proposals: Daniel Zeller, Michael Croteau and Josh Imhoff: (Image?) simplification. Clarence Johnson and Sawyer Bowman: Solar radiation modeling. Maddie Baird, Gina Stalica, Adam Gordon and Walker Kennedy: Sea level rise.
	10/30	Project proposals: Luis Rosias and Adela Yang: Rendering a terrain in OpenGL. Peter Yasi and Anthony Todesco: viewshed-xxl (viewshed for for large data). Ike May and Evan Hoyt: (Lidar data?) simplification. Skyler Lee: Rendering a terrain in OpenGL. Alexi Roberts: TBD.
9	11/4, 11/6	Daniel, Michael and Josh: Grid-to-TIN simplification. Fast Polygonal Approximation of Terrains and Height Fields by Michael Garland and Paul S. Heckbert, 1995. Sawyer, Clarence: Solar radiation modeling. Fast clear-sky solar irradiation computation for very large digital elevation models by Romero, Tabik, Vias, Zapata: in Computer Physics Communications, 2008. The solar radiation model for Open source GIS: implementation and applications by J. Hofierka, M. Suri: in Proceedings of the Open source GIS - GRASS users conference, 2002. Maddie, Gina, Adam and Walker: Sea level rise. Peter and Anthony: Parallel viewshed. Efficient data structure and highly scalable algorithm for total viewshed computation (Tabik, Cervilla, Zapata, Romero; IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing; 2014) Simultaneous computation of total viewshed on large high resolution grids (Tabik, Zapata, Romero; International Journal of Geographical Information Science; 2012) Ike and Evan: LIDAR data simplification. Generating Raster DEM from Mass Points via TIN Streaming by Isenburg, Liu, Shewchuck , Snoeyink, Thirion; GIScience 2006. Adela and Luis: OpenGL intro. Skyler: OpenGL intro. Alexi: TBD
10	11/11	[Elective readings] Notes: Quadtrees: qdt.pdf From point cloud to Grid DEM: a scalable approiach (Agarwal, Arge, Danner, SDH 2006)
	11/13
11	11/18	[Elective readings] Visibility preserving simplification(Ben-Moshe, Katz, Mitchell, Nir, SoCG 2002)
	11/20
12	11/25	[Elective readings] A hybrid MPI/GPU interpolation for grid DEM construction (Danner et al, ACMGIS 2012) | assignment
	11/27	THANKSGIVING BREAK
13	12/2	[Elective readings] Approximating the Visible Region of a Point on a Terrain (Ben-Moshe, Carmi and Katz, ALENEX/ANALCO 2004)
	12/4
14	12/9	Project presentations. Sea level rise, by Adam Gordon, Maddie Baird. Gina Stalica and Walker Kennedy [slides] Solar radiation on grids, by Sawyer Bowman and Clarence Johnson. Grid to TIN simplification, by Ike May and Evan Hoyt
	12/11

The final project will be due at the last class.

Readings

Solar radiation modeling

• Romero, Tabik, Vias, Zapata: Fast clear-sky solar irradiation computation for very large digital elevation models; in Computer Physics Communications, 2008.
• J. Hofierka, M. Suri: The solar radiation model for Open source GIS: implementation and applications; in Proceedings of the Open source GIS - GRASS users conference, 2002.
• C. Chalkias and A. Faka: Risk evaluation by modelling exposure to direct sunlight on rural highways – A GIS approach; in 2009, Mathematical Models and Applied Computing pp.373-378.

Sea level rise

• USGS 2009 report: National Assessment if coastal vulnerability to sea-level rise (notes: they compute CVI=coastal vulnerability index; they have nice pics; do they compute flooding at all?? they have nice pictures with vulnerability of east and west coast)
• USGS: Vulnerability of US National parks to sea-level rise and coastal change (notes:2 pages, great info; great discussion of contribution factors)
• NOAA 2011: New mapping tool and technique for visualizing sea level rise and coastal flooding impacts
• Photogr. Eng. and Remore Sensing, 2009: GIS analysis of global impacts from sea level rise (Li, Rowley, Kostelnick, Braaten, Melsel, Hulbutta) (notes: they use the iterative algorithm and observe that onnectivity check is necessary; good info of global datasets, GTOPO, ETOPO, etc; good results, general info)

Image simplification

• Fast Polygonal Approximation of Terrains and Height Fields (Michael Garland and Paul S. Heckbert, 1995)
• Garland's Terra, Scape, QSlim
• Jonathan Shewchuck's website; links to TRIANGLE and streaming geometric software.
• Image Compression Terrain Simplification (Ben-Mosche, Serruya, Shamir, 2007)
• Digital elevation models and TIN algorithms (van Kreveld)
• QuadTIN: Quadtree based Triangulated Irregular Networks (Pajarola, Antonijuan, and Lario, 2002)
• Image Simplification and Vectorization (Olsen, Gooch, 2011)
• Visibility preserving simplification(Ben-Moshe, Katz, Mitchell, Nir, SoCG 2002)

Parallel viewshed on terrains

• Efficient data structure and highly scalable algorithm for total viewshed computation (Tabik, Cervilla, Zapata, Romero; IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing; 2014)
• Simultaneous computation of total viewshed on large high resolution grids (Tabik, Zapata, Romero; International Journal of Geographical Information Science; 2012)
• A Parallel Sweep Line Algorithm for Visibility Computation (ferreira, Andrade, Magalhes, Franklin, Pena; Proc. Brazilian Symp. on GeoInformatics, 2013 )

LIDAR data simplification

• Generating Raster DEM from Mass Points via TIN Streaming (Isenburg, Liu, Shewchuck , Snoeyink, Thirion; GIScience 2006)
• A novel computational paradigm for creating a Triangular Irregular Network (TIN) from LiDAR data (Ali, Mehrabian; 2009; Nonlinear Analysis: Theory, Methods & Applications) <---- overview of TINs and DT
• LIDAR to grid: LIDAR data reduction for efficient and high quality DEM generation (Liu, Zhang; ??; YY)
• LiDAR data reduction using vertex decimation and processing with GPGPU and multicore CPU technology (Dossay Oryspayeva, Ramanathan Sugumaranb,John DeGrooteb, Paul Graya; Computers and Geosciences; 2012)