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To provide the results of research to evaluate the usability of a University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries digital initiatives project that provides online access to historical Aerial Photographs of Colorado.

This paper describes usability testing conducted as a part of a user‐centered redesign. The three stages of the evaluation – a requirements analysis, a heuristic evaluation, and user testing – are explained and the findings are discussed.

The usability testing revealed the needs of the project's target user group and identified issues with the interface that will be addressed in its redesign. It has also contributed to the larger understanding of how researchers use digital Aerial Photographs and their preferred methods of access and desired functionalities.

Results from the study will be used to guide the redesign of the Aerial Photographs of Colorado digital library and can be generalized to add to a broader understanding of the usability requirements for a digital library of geospatial materials. Libraries providing a digital collection of geospatial materials may use these findings to inform design decisions.

Much research has been done on the use and evaluation of digital libraries, but few articles have reported on usability studies of online collections of cartographic materials similar in structure to Aerial Photographs of Colorado. It is hoped that these findings will be instructive to librarians designing and evaluating similar digital libraries.

THE Funk Gerat 10 equipment is the latest standardized type, and is installed in all the later bombers and reconnaissance machines of the Luftwaffe.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the procedure for near-automation of the most commonly used manual georeferencing technique in a desktop GIS environment for historic aerial photographs strip in library archives.

Most of the archived historic aerial photography consists of series of aerial photographs that overlap to some extent, as the optimal overlap ratio is known as 60 percent by photogrammetric standard. Therefore, conjugate points can be detected for the overlapping area. The first image was georeferenced manually by six-parameter affine transformation using 2013 National Agriculture Imagery Program images as ground truths. Then, conjugate points were detected in the first and second images using Speeded Up Robust Features and Random Sample Consensus. The ground space coordinates of conjugate points were estimated using the first image’s six parameters. Then the second image’s six parameters were calculated using conjugate points’ ground space coordinates and pixel coordinates in the second image. This procedure was repeated until the last image was georeferenced. However, error accumulated as the number of photographs increased. Therefore, another six-parameter affine transformation was implemented using control points in the first, middle, and last images. Finally, the images were warped using open source GIS tools.

The result shows that historic aerial strip collections can be georeferenced with far less time and labor using the technique proposed compared with the traditional manual georeferencing technique in a desktop GIS environment.

The suggested approach will promote the usage of historic aerial photographs for various scientific purposes including land use and land cover change detection, soil erosion pattern recognition, agricultural practices change analysis, environmental improvement assessment, and natural habitat change detection.

Most commonly used georeferencing procedures for historic aerial photographs in academic libraries require significant time and effort for manual measurement of conjugate points in the object images and the ground truth images. By maximizing the automation of georeferencing procedures, the suggested approach will save significant time and effort of library workforce.

With the suggested approach, large numbers of historic aerial photographs can be rapidly georeferenced. This will allow libraries to provide more geospatial data to scientific communities.

This is a unique approach to rapid georeferencing of historic aerial photograph strips.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the specification language TML for adaptive mission plans that the authors designed and implemented for the open-source framework Aerostack for aerial robotics.

The TML language combines a task-based hierarchical approach together with a more flexible representation, rule-based reactive planning, to facilitate adaptability. This approach includes additional notions that abstract programming details. The authors built an interpreter integrated in the software framework Aerostack. The interpreter was validated with flight experiments for multi-robot missions in dynamic environments.

The experiments proved that the TML language is easy to use and expressive enough to formulate adaptive missions in dynamic environments. The experiments also showed that the TML interpreter is efficient to execute multi-robot aerial missions and reusable for different platforms. The TML interpreter is able to verify the mission plan before its execution, which increases robustness and safety, avoiding the execution of certain plans that are not feasible.

One of the main contributions of this work is the availability of a reliable solution to specify aerial mission plans, integrated in an active open-source project with periodic releases. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are not solutions similar to this in other active open-source projects. As additional contributions, TML uses an original combination of representations for adaptive mission plans (i.e. task trees with original abstract notions and rule-based reactive planning) together with the demonstration of its adequacy for aerial robotics.

Data quality and data resolution are essential for computer vision tasks like medical image processing, object detection, pattern recognition and so on. Super-resolution is a way to increase the image resolution, and super-resolved images contain more information compared to their low-resolution counterparts. The purpose of this study is analyzing the effects of the super resolution models trained before on object detection for aerial images.

Two different models were trained using the Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Network (SRGAN) architecture on two aerial image data sets, the xView and the Dataset for Object deTection in Aerial images (DOTA). This study uses these models to increase the resolution of aerial images for improving object detection performance. This study analyzes the effects of the model with the best perceptual index (PI) and the model with the best RMSE on object detection in detail.

Super-resolution increases the object detection quality as expected. But, the super-resolution model with better perceptual quality achieves lower mean average precision results compared to the model with better RMSE. It means that the model with a better PI is more meaningful to human perception but less meaningful to computer vision.

The contributions of the authors to the literature are threefold. First, they do a wide analysis of SRGAN results for aerial image super-resolution on the task of object detection. Second, they compare super-resolution models with best PI and best RMSE to showcase the differences on object detection performance as a downstream task first time in the literature. Finally, they use a transfer learning approach for super-resolution to improve the performance of object detection.

This paper aims to assess the effects of chemically accelerated leaching on the physical and mechanical properties of aerial lime–cement mortars (LCMs).

Two aerial LCMs, differencing mainly in their calcium hydroxide content, were degraded by the use of an ammonium nitrate solution as a leaching agent. The leaching effects were studied by evaluating the rate of change in physical (sorptivity and mass loss) and mechanical (flexural and compressive strength) characteristics of aerial LCMs. To quantify the evolution and kinetics of degradation, the leached depth was then characterized at different levels of degradation by means of a phenolphthalein solution.

The experimental results showed that the dissolution of binder decreases the mass, alkalinity and strength of aerial LCMs but increases their sorptivity. A linear relationship was derived by plotting the values of leached depth against the square root of immersion time in an aggressive solution. It was found that the leached depth followed diffusion-controlled kinetics.

It was found that the global loss of compressive strength of aerial LCMs because of complete dissolution of calcium hydroxide can reach up to 80 per cent.

Purpose – To describe an LSTA‐funded project that digitized 88,000 black and white aerial photographs and 2,500 photomosaic indexes created for Florida by the US Department of Agriculture between 1938 and 1971. Technical specifications of digital capture, specialized programming, and project value are reviewed. Design/methodology/approach – The 9 × 9 inch aerial tiles were captured on flatbed scanners; the larger photomosaic indexes were captured using a large format camera. Three software tools were designed for the project: the first tracked each tile through the entire in‐house processing including receipt, assignment, scan completion, QC processing, FTPing to server, and archiving of images. The second automated image collection, from disparate scanning stations, performed basic image manipulation for quality control, and stored collected data in a database. The third tool performed routine image corrections, prepared and deployed web format images, and packed archival image formats preparatory to burning CDs. The tile layer of the GIS interface was created by georectifying the composite photomosaic indexes for each Florida county and linking tiles to appropriate points. Findings – Because aerial photographs are inherently spatial, the development team agreed that a GIS interface was the appropriate vehicle for web presentation. While this environment presents no difficulties for more sophisticated users, GIS functionality is not intuitive. A less complex interface is a top priority for future project refinements. Originality/value – The value of this project is documented in terms of site use and solicited user responses.

Over a century of state-sponsored construction of monuments, historic mythmaking and nationalist framings of WWI has ensured that it has become notoriously difficult to present the heritage of the Great War in an inclusive and non-selective way. In this paper the authors present a strategy and technology-driven solutions to overcome the selective heritage curation of modern conflict.

Building on a suite of tools, applications and cultural heritage management plans developed by the In Flanders Fields Museum (IFFM), this paper explores the challenges of preserving and curating conflict heritage. The authors investigate the philosophy, cultural heritage management strategies and exhibitions used to curate the heritage of the Ypres Salient (Belgium).

The paper argues that historical aerial photographs integrated in multimedia exhibits present themselves as a fascinating source bringing the landscape within the walls of the museum. Mobile augmented reality (AR) applications developed by the museum go one step beyond and bring museum techniques to the landscape.

This paper presents a strategy to present, manage and curate the entirety of conflict heritage from the modern period. Faced with growing politicisation and memorialisation of modern conflict, it is extremely important that inclusive heritage management and curation is insured. The reflections on different curatorial techniques used by the IFFM can contribute globally towards a better heritage engagement.

An innovative and meaningful framework enables a more historically nuanced visitor experience to key heritage sites throughout the Ypres Salient.

Ensuring a non-selective heritage experience is especially pressing today. Over the past century canonised and national narratives have prescribed our understanding of the First World War across Europe and beyond.

Adopting a critical stance towards the proliferation in AR apps and applying theories from anthropology and phenomenology has been developed combining AR with arboreal landscape relics.

To present a case study of a digital initiative for cartographic materials in order to provide a reference for other institutions embarking on similar projects.

Describes the technical and practical details of the processes involved in georeferencing and providing online access to scanned aerial photographs.

In the short time that the site has been live, the Map Library has already seen a marked increase in reference queries from both local and national users.

From a practical standpoint, the project would not have been a success without collaboration between map, metadata, and systems librarians.

To date, little has been published about digital initiatives projects providing online access to historical aerial photographs, a distinct and complex subset of cartographic materials. It is hoped that this case study will allow other institutions to learn from the approach and experience of the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries.

Connecting autonomous drones to ground operations and services is a prerequisite for the adoption of scalable and sustainable drone services in the built environment. Despite the rapid advance in the field of autonomous drones, the development of ground infrastructure has received less attention. Contemporary airport design offers potential solutions for the infrastructure serving autonomous drone services. To that end, this paper aims to construct a framework for connecting air and ground operations for autonomous drone services. Furthermore, the paper defines the minimum facilities needed to support unmanned aerial vehicles for autonomous logistics and the collection of aerial data.

The paper reviews the state-of-the-art in airport design literature as the basis for analysing the guidelines of manned aviation applicable to the development of ground infrastructure for autonomous drone services. Socio-technical system analysis was used for identifying the service needs of drones.

The key findings are functional modularity based on the principles of airport design applies to micro-airports and modular service functions can be connected efficiently with an autonomous ground handling system in a sustainable manner addressing the concerns on maintenance, reliability and lifecycle.

As the study was limited to the airport design literature findings, the evolution of solutions may provide features supporting deviating approaches. The role of autonomy and cloud-based service processes are quintessentially different from the conventional airport design and are likely to impact real-life solutions as the area of future research.

The findings of this study provided a framework for establishing the connection between the airside and the landside for the operations of autonomous aerial services. The lack of such framework and ground infrastructure has hindered the large-scale adoption and easy-to-use solutions for sustainable logistics and aerial data collection for decision-making in the built environment.

The evolution of future autonomous aerial services should be accessible to all users, “democratising” the use of drones. The data collected by drones should comply with the privacy-preserving use of the data. The proposed ground infrastructure can contribute to offloading, storing and handling aerial data to support drone services’ acceptability.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper describes the first design framework for creating a design concept for a modular and autonomous micro-airport system for unmanned aviation based on the applied functions of full-size conventional airports.