Expanding Access to THEOS with Free Educational Software Sally E. Goldin & Kurt T. Rudahl Geoinformatics Laboratory at KMUTT King Mongkut's University.

Expanding Access to THEOS with Free Educational Software

Sally E. Goldin & Kurt T. RudahlGeoinformatics Laboratory at KMUTT

King Mongkut's University of Technology ThonburiBangkok, Thailand

THEOS Data Users Meeting13 February 2012

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A New Era for Remote Sensing in Thailand Abundant, affordable data Near-real-time information High resolution Under Thai control

Agriculture Water management Forest conservation Urban planning Etc...

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Expanded User Base for RS Imagery

Government agencies Local administrative bodies NGOs Educational organizations Commercial companies Communities and cooperatives

Many of these new users will know little about analyzing and interpreting remote sensing data

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What do these new users need?

Theoretical knowledge Principles of remote sensing Limitations of imagery Image processing algorithms

Practical skills Interpreting images Planning and executing analyses

Software tools This is our topic today

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Introducing OpenDragon

Easy-to-use image analysis and raster modeling Multilingual user interface (including Thai) Detailed user manual and context-sensitive help Rich set of core analysis capabilities Imports THEOS data sets Programmer's Toolkit for extensibility Free!

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History of OpenDragon

1984-1986 - Goldin & Rudahl, at Asian Institute of Technology, recognize the need for affordable software for remote sensing education

1987 – Dragon V1.0 – first remote sensing image analysis package to run on an off-the-shelf PC

2004 – KMUTT provides three years funding for OpenDragon project, to make the software free for educational organizations in SE Asia. After project ends, Goldin-Rudahl Systems, Inc. continues support.

2010 – Goldin-Rudahl Systems makes OpenDragon free for everyone, announces plan to open the source code

Since then, the software has been downloaded by people in 85 countries

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OpenDragon was designed for teaching

Context-sensitive help explains every parameter

No magic or wizards – approaches analysis operations step by step

Scripting capability allows instructors to automate more complex operations

Users new to remote sensing do not have to struggle with English

Fully internationalized, with versions for many languages

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OpenDragon Capabilities Gray, composite and pseudocolor display,

image overlay, annotation, zoom, capture Band arithmetic, vegetation indices,

convolution, principal components, masking Geometric correction/registration Supervised and unsupervised classification

including training, signature editing, MDM, max likelihood, K-means clustering, slicing, error analysis

Vector capture with image background, rasterization, measurement, area histograms, transect profiles, irregular subsetting, recoding

Interactive value display for pixels and regions

Buffering, aspect and slope calculation, multi-criteria modeling

Image histogram, scatterplot, statistics, metadata display and editing

Import and export of raster and vector data Log capture to create scripts

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Programmer's Toolkit

Provides header files and libraries to allow users to add new capabilities to OpenDragon

Written in standard C for use with free compilers such as gcc

Read and write Dragon format images, vectors, signature files, etc. Manage meta data.

Excellent resource for education

Shortcut to teaching geoinformatics software development

Support for researchers developing new algorithms

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Education using OpenDragon: Case Studies

High school workshop on drought analysis 2B-KMUTT – High school research project Graduate thesis work Professional education in geoinformatics

programming

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High School Remote Sensing Workshop

In October 2005, at the request of HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and with the cooperation of GISTDA, the OpenDragon project presented a three-day workshop for students from Mahidol Wittayanusorn school.

The topic was remote sensing for drought monitoring

Experts on remote sensing technology, meteorology, and water resources provide background lectures

Labs used OpenDragon for multitemporal analysis of images of reservoirs around Thailand, from normal versus drought years

On the third day, students presented their results and conclusions

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OpenDragon High School Workshop

Normal Year

Drought Year

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2B-KMUTT Program

Mathayom 5 students spend three weeks at KMUTT during summer break, working on research projects with faculty

One young woman worked with us to develop code for the Tassled Cap transformation using the Programmer's Toolkit

Although she knew nothing about remote sensing before she came to KMUTT and little about programming, she successfully completed her project.

Original Image

BrightnessComponent

GreennessComponent

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Master's ThesisImproving the Estimated Area of Rice Cultivation by Classification Techniques

by Ithiphol Ekahitanonda

Compared standard maximum likelihood classification with multitemporal fuzzy-rule-based classification

Best fuzzy rule set was developed using Genetic Algorithms

Mr. Ithiphol wrote more than a dozen C modules using the Programmer's Toolkit to implement his novel algorithms

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Computer Programming for Geographers Course for graduate students in Geoinformatics – many already work in

geospatially-oriented positions

Presented twice at Chiang Mai University, once at Burapha University

Goal is to teach students enough programming that they can:

Understand how geospatial data is represented and manipulated in a program

Modify an existing program to customize its behavior

Understand what is “under the hood” of geospatial software in order to critically evaluate the answers that software provides

Half lecture, half lab – Programmer's Toolkit used for raster exercises

Hand-on work modifying real code builds students' confidence

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How can you get OpenDragon?

Go to http://www.open-dragon.org/software_dl.html

Fill in the contact form to register

You will receive a serial number by email

Return to the www.open-dragon.org site. Enter the serial number to download the package, sample data, and the Programmer's Toolkit, if you wish

OpenDragon currently runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. A port to Linux is planned for the future.

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Other Resources

Learning Remote Sensing is a textbook aimed at new users of R/S imagery. It provides hands-on exercises using downloadable data sets

The book is available in both digital and print formats.

Contact us at break or visit the OpenDragon website for details

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OpenDragon is not for everyone OpenDragon can process images up to 1024x1024 in size.

These capacity limits mean it is not appropriate for production image processing

Dragon/ips® Professional is a more powerful commercial version capable of processing full THEOS scenes

OpenDragon provides a way for new users to ease into the complex world of remote sensing image processing

OpenDragon speaks your language

OpenDragon is free

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Questions?

Contact us for more information!

Sally Goldin & Kurt RudahlGeoinformatics Lab at KMUTT

[email protected]