Week 7: Chasing cars

Research:
Finished the orthorectification of 1953 aerial photos in the three key areas defined in South Africa for the mapping of gully extension. Having done that, I realized that I had no real plan as to do with them - much like a dog having finally caught the car he was chasing. Experimented with ways to extract gully characteristics stereographically. Weekly meeting with supervisor was good, but more focussed on external data sources etc. Performed some validation of the 2008 DEM I constructed using stereophotogrammetry by comparing it to a LIDAR campaign, and the results are encouraging (except of course that it took the LIDAR a few seconds to do what took me a month). Anywaaay.....

Writing:
Still postponed until next week, when the last of my analyses will be finished.

Week 6: Gully hunting

Research:
Finally received the camera calibration reports from CDSM, so the process of orthorectifying historical aerial photography of the Eastern Cape commenced. Had a productive meeting with my supervisor, and he did me the favour of setting 14 October as the final deadline for my PhD analysis. After that it is full-time writing all the way. Spent the rest of the week orthorectifying. The bitch is that even a decent orthorectification in Erdas always has a few meters of RMS error, so some spline rubbersheeting is necessary to fit the areas of interest to exactly the right spot. Takes loooong and is booooring.

Writing:
No writing again this week. Think I will just use all my time to process imagery until 14 October, and then get to writing again.

Week 5: Photogrammetry

Research:
The principal goal of the week was to build a stereo DEM of an area north of Matatiele. First try gave dubious results because I didn't initialize the stereo pair with the true calibration parameters. Phoned the Chief Directorate: Surveys & Mappings in Cape Town, and the promised to send me the calibration reports, which of course, they didn't. Even after repeated email requests. Angry about that.

So the rest of the week kinda slowed down from there. Prepared for, and performed more aerial photography of Rivieres de Galets from a small aircraft. The planning paid off, and the images are beautiful and at a very acceptable resolution. Further, identified areas of gully erosion in the South African study area that will be studied using time-series analysis. Also had a very positive meeting with my supervisor, and we decided on a list of candidates for my PhD jury. Exciting stuff.

Writing:
Again, zip. Not good.

Week 4: Riviere des Remparts

Research
This week was dedicated primarily to starting (and finishing!) a section of my PhD that deals with erosion in Riviere des Remparts on the south east coast. Lots of back-&-forthing between conflicting projections & vertical coordinate systems, but finally some interesting results. Also tackled a enormous box filled with (what I thought would be) an eternity of manual data entry from company reports - turns out only two or three reports deal with Riviere des Remparts. Suspect somebody stole a key report, but no way to prove it... meh.

Identified one (of probably a few) case study areas for gully erosion in the Eastern Cape. Started consolidating the historical aerial photography for that area. Mosaicked the 2001 images to serve as reference set and constructed a 20m DEM from 1:50 000 contours.

Did a test-flight of the new version of the Poivilliers software and it works like a charm. Communication with the developer also ironed out some zooming issues. Next week will see a brand spanking new DEM of Matatiele as it looked in 1955...

Writing
Zip.

Week 3: Fragmentation

Research:
Spent largest part of the week (apart from some administrative nonsense) preparing data for stereophotogrammetry on the 2003 dataset (selecting GCP's, registering images - learning HOW to register images with fiducial marks). Performed preliminary elevation extraction and (after several accuracy tests) encountered a 3.6m vertical offset in the data - undoubtedly linked to the obscure French datum used to collect the input data - have to either subtract the average error, or find a way to convert between datums. Image size also too big for software to handle (it's never easy, is it?). Software developer promised to send updated version of software next week which will solve a lot of problems and provide a much larger amount of automation. Have decided to let everything stew until I get the new version.

Writing
Slow, as always, but getting there. Felt like I was breaking through the barrier of my own perfectionism for the first time this week. Pretty much finished the "Research Problem and Aims" section of Chapter 1. Would have liked to achieve more, but it's ok. At least I am gaining momentum.

Week 2: Slooow

Research:
Finished interferometry processing. Layerstacked and PCA'd results to aid in decisionmaking. Narrowed down area of interest for South African multi-temporal study based on interferometry results. Prepared data & calibration reports for stereo processing of 2003 Reunion aerial photography but ran into software issues. Contacted "tech support".

I am purposely not going into the details of the research I am doing since there is an amount of intellectual capital involved, and I don't want to give everyting away on the internet :-)

Writing:
Didn't write enough. Read the three seminal works that will support Chapter 1, but only wrote few sentences of "Problem statement" section. Fell into the trap of trying to write and edit at the same time instead of just writing. Have to get over this.

Week 1: Small step for man

Research:
Been processing ERS, ALOS and ASAR interferometry this week and creating derivative products. Updated the existing DEM of Réunion with a more up-to-date one to assist in correct geocoding of radar imagery (which necessitated redoing a lot of the inteferometry). Studied the concept of interferometric coherence (still some stuff I don't understand, but getting there).

Writing:
Not much, having only decided yesterday that the time for writing is NOW and not "later". So (embarassingly) belatedly, I have written the first sentence of my PhD today - as in sentence 1, chapter 1. After much deliberation about where one should actually start a PhD (some are of the opinion that chapter one is the last thing you write) I have decided that I need chapter 1 finished and done as soon as possible - if only for my own sanity. And, as always, the "Do it badly, but do it" rule will apply. In fact, I will need to tell myself to "Do it really, really badly, but do it", otherwise I won't ever get anywhere... Damn perfectionism!