Category: Research

  • Empowering Change: OpenRouteService in Geospatial Initiatives for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Sustainable Development

    Empowering Change: OpenRouteService in Geospatial Initiatives for Women’s Economic Empowerment and Sustainable Development

    The use of open-source geospatial data, exemplified by services like openrouteservice (ORS), proves to be beneficial for both academic research and use case studies. Witnessing our technologies applied in unanticipated ways showcases their potential to meet the evolving needs of various sectors while contributing positively to both society and the environment. One exemplary application is…

  • Unveiling the Impact of School Commutes: Charles Hatfield Presents Insights on Traffic Congestion and Urban Planning at ATRC 2024

    Unveiling the Impact of School Commutes: Charles Hatfield Presents Insights on Traffic Congestion and Urban Planning at ATRC 2024

    Charles Hatfield will represent HeiGIT at the first ever African Transport Research Conference (ATRC 2024) which takes place from March 5-7 in Capetown, South Afrika. The conference was established to address rapid urbanisation in Africa and the corresponding challenges for transport and infrastructure. Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) and the Centre for Transport Studies…

  • VirtuaLearn3D: New Preprint

    VirtuaLearn3D: New Preprint

    We have published a preprint of our recent work in the VirtuaLearn3D project! Deep learning with simulated laser scanning data for 3D point cloud classification Esmorís, A.M., Weiser, H., Winiwarter, L., Cabaleiro, J.C. & Höfle, B. (2024) Laser scanning is an active remote sensing technique to acquire state-of-the-art spatial measurements in the form of 3D…

  • OQT for Food Environments

    OQT for Food Environments

    HeiGIT and the Amsterdam University Medical Centers (UMC) partnered up to investigate food environments through the lens of OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. UMC analyses how exposure to different categories of food related retailers affects health matters. The assumption is that the distance to retailers of a certain category, as well as the number of these retailers,…

  • Introducing OhsomeNowStats

    Introducing OhsomeNowStats

    OhsomeNowStats allows users to take a look at the mapping activity in OpenStreetMap. This is especially useful for humanitarian organizations and mapathon organizers, because OhsomeNowStats data is updated every 5-10 minutes. Using this tool, user-engagement can be tracked in near real time and used to motivate participants and volunteers alike! By selecting a time range,…

  • Analysis of Humanitarian OSM Stats: User activity through HOT-TM and contributing organizations

    Analysis of Humanitarian OSM Stats: User activity through HOT-TM and contributing organizations

    Introduction In this blogpost we are taking a look at humanitarian mapping through the Tasking Manager (HOT-TM) that is operated by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). At HeiGIT we work together with HOT to provide analyses and statistics to further understand mapping activity. Explore the user and mapping stats of all Tasking Manager activites here. Check our blog posts about topics…

  • New paper on the potential of simulated laser scanning and field data to train forest biomass models

    New paper on the potential of simulated laser scanning and field data to train forest biomass models

    In great collaboration with colleagues from Karlsruhe (DE), Vienna (AT), Brno (CZ), Leipzig (DE), Raszyn (PL), and Berlin (DE), we published a paper investigating approaches to improve LiDAR-based biomass models when only limited sample plots with field data are available. The main work was carried out by PhD student Jannika Schäfer (IFGG, Karlsruhe Institute of…

  • DFG Software Grant

    DFG Software Grant

    Successful proposal: Fostering a community-driven and sustainable HELIOS++ scientific software The 3DGeo Group and the Scientific Software Center (SSC) of Heidelberg University have been successful with their proposal in the DFG call “Research Software – Quality assured and re-usable”, together with two other project proposals at Heidelberg University (see press release). The main objective of…

  • Exploring the Value of Microsoft ML Roads for OSM Data Quality Analysis

    The completeness of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) road network has been an ongoing focus for researchers for more than 15 years. For instance, Neis et al. (2011) investigated the OSM street network evolution in Germany and compared it against road data from TomTom. Whereas obtaining reference data has been rather difficult in the past, nowadays we…

  • 🦇 Halloween release of HELIOS++, v1.3.0

    🦇 Halloween release of HELIOS++, v1.3.0

    We proudly present our Halloween release of HELIOS++, Version 1.3.0: https://github.com/3dgeo-heidelberg/helios/releases What’s new in this release? HELIOS++ now supports LiDAR simulation of dynamic scenes. We can now simulate laser scanning of scenes that change during the simulation. This is done by introducing rigid motions, which are defined with XML syntax in the scene XML file.…

  • Analyzing Bikeability

    Analyzing Bikeability

    For various reasons biking is becoming a more frequently used mode of transportation. It offers flexibility, is quite cheap compared to other modes of transportation, helps with fitness and is almost carbon neutral. To evaluate how well adapted the existing infrastructure is to accommodate biking, Manuel Kraft of HeiGIT created the “Bikeability-Index”. Analyzing Bikeability There…

  • Today is the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction!

    Today is the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction!

    Did you know that October 13th is the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR)? Since 1989, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction promotes a global culture of risk-awareness and disaster reduction on this day and encourages the community to share their events, promotions and ideas regarding disaster risk reduction. Under this year’s…