Successful PhD defense of Katharina Anders

On Tuesday, 16 November 2021, Dr Katharina Anders defended her PhD research with great success.

In her dissertation, Katharina developed methods on 4D change analysis to extract natural surface changes from near-continuous LiDAR time series of dynamic landscapes.

Congratulations, Katharina, for this excellent research – we are very proud to have you in our team and wish you all the best for the future!

The defense took place in a hybrid format with Prof. Olaf Bubenzer, Jun.-Prof. Anna Growe, Prof. Bernhard Höfle and Prof. Maggi Kelly as members of the committee.
The defense took place in a hybrid format with Prof. Olaf Bubenzer, Jun.-Prof. Anna Growe, Prof. Bernhard Höfle and Prof. Maggi Kelly as members of the committee.
4D PhD hat.
4D PhD hat.

Using time series-based change analysis, the developed approach takes advantage of the history of surface change by performing spatiotemporal segmentation with the concept of 4D objects-by-change (4D-OBCs). The method identifies areas in the scene where surfaces change similarly over time in sub-periods of the full time series at neighboring locations.

Key features of time series-based change analysis are:

  • Removing the requirement to select and predefine periods for the analysis of changes
  • Extracting change forms at different (unknown) timing, change rates, durations of change processes, and persistence of (temporary) change forms
  • Separating spatially overlapping changes, which might be aggregated in bitemporal change information of a scene

This enables a generic extraction of surface changes in their varying spatial and temporal extents from large and dense 4D geospatial data.

Concept of research in the dissertation.
Concept of research in the dissertation.

More details on Katharina’s research can be found e.g. in the publications below and on the project website: