Publications related to An Eye for Landscapes - Rapid Aerial Mapping with Handheld Sensors

Snowfall deposition in mountainous terrain: a statistical downscaling scheme from high-resolution model data on simulated topographies

One of the primary causes of non-uniform snowfall deposition on the ground in mountainous regions is the preferential deposition of snow, which results from the interaction of near-surface winds with topography and snow particles. However, producing high-r ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Downscaling of Historical Wind Fields over Switzerland Using Generative Adversarial Networks

Anthony Christopher Davison, Ophélia Mireille Anna Miralles

Near-surface wind is difficult to estimate using global numerical weather and climate models, because airflow is strongly modified by underlying topography, especially that of a country such as Switzerland. In this article, we use a statistical approach ba ...

2022

A Downscaling Intercomparison Study: The Representation of Slope- and Ridge-Scale Processes in Models of Different Complexity

Varun Sharma, Franziska Gerber, Albertus Christiaan Kruyt, Dylan Stewart Reynolds

Spatially distributed meteorological information at the slope scale is relevant for many processes in complex terrain, yet information at this sub-km spatial resolution is difficult to obtain. While downscaling to kilometer resolutions is well described in ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2022

How Forward-Scattering Snow and Terrain Change the Alpine Radiation Balance With Application to Solar Panels

Michael Lehning, Annelen Kahl

Rough terrain in mid- and high latitudes is often covered with highly reflective snow, giving rise to a very complex transfer of incident sunlight. In order to simplify the radiative transfer in weather and climate models, snow is generally treated as an i ...

2021

Multiscale Very High Resolution Topographic Models in Alpine Ecology: Pros and Cons of Airborne LiDAR and Drone-Based Stereo-Photogrammetry Technologies

Stéphane Joost, Aude Rogivue, Estelle Rochat, Kevin Leempoel, Annie Sandrine Guillaume

The vulnerability of alpine environments to climate change presses an urgent need to accurately model and understand these ecosystems. Popularity in the use of digital elevation models (DEMs) to derive proxy environmental variables has increased over the p ...

2021

Mapping quality prediction for RTK/PPK-equipped micro-drones operating in complex natural environment

Jan Skaloud, Davide Antonio Cucci, Laurent Valentin Jospin, Emmanuel Pierre Quentin Clédat

Drone mapping with GNSS-assisted photogrammetry is a highly efficient method for surveying small -or medium- sized areas. However, the mapping quality is not intuitively predictable, particularly in complex environments (with steep and cluttered terrain), ...

2020

FDTD Modeling of Lightning Electromagnetic Field Propagation Over Mountainous Terrain

Marcos Rubinstein, Dongshuai Li

The Full-Wave Finite-Difference-Time-Domain (FDTD) electromagnetic (EM) simulation method can simulate large domains and produce time-marching solutions for arbitrary time-domain sources, making it ideal for many lightning applications. In this paper, a tw ...

IEEE2019

Potential and uncertainty of wind energy in the Swiss Alps

Albertus Christiaan Kruyt

Switzerland has committed itself to an ambitious energy strategy. It aims to replace the exist- ing nuclear generation capacity with predominantly indigenous renewable resources. Wind power could play a significant role in this transition, yet the wind res ...

EPFL2019

From the clouds to the ground - Effects of flow-precipitation interactions on snow distribution in complex alpine terrain

Franziska Gerber

Knowledge about the spatial distribution of seasonal snow is essential e.g. to efficiently manage fresh water resources or for hydro-power companies. The large-scale gradient of snow accumulation over mountain ranges is mainly determined by lifting condens ...

EPFL2018

A close-ridge small-scale atmospheric flow field and its influence on snow accumulation

Michael Lehning, Franziska Gerber, Sebastian Wilhelm Hoch

The rough, steep, and complex terrain in the alpine environment causes a variety of flow patterns such as blocking, speed-up, or flow separation, which influence precipitation, snow deposition, and ultimately snow distribution on the ground. Cloud-terrain ...

Amer Geophysical Union2017

On Lightning Electromagnetic Field Propagation Along an Irregular Terrain

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein, Stefan Metz, Davide Pavanello, Mario Paolone, Mohammad Azadifar, Dongshuai Li, Zhaoyang Wang, Qilin Zhang

In this paper, we present a theoretical analysis of the propagation effects of lightning electromagnetic fields over a mountainous terrain. The analysis is supported by experimental observations consisting of simultaneous records of lightning currents and ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers2016

Adapting tilt corrections and the governing flow equations for steep, fully three-dimensional, mountainous terrain

Marc Parlange, Wolf Hendrik Huwald, Eric Richard Pardyjak, Holly Jayne Oldroyd

In recent studies of atmospheric turbulent surface exchange in complex terrain, questions arise concerning velocity-sensor tilt corrections and the governing flow equations for coordinate systems aligned with steep slopes. The standard planar-fit method, a ...

2016

Intercomparison of Terrain-Following Coordinate Transformation and Immersed Boundary Methods for Large-Eddy Simulation of Wind Fields over Complex Terrain

Jiannong Fang, Fernando Porté Agel

Accurate modeling of complex terrain, especially steep terrain, in the simulation of wind fields remains a challenge. It is well known that the terrain-following coordinate transformation method (TFCT) generally used in atmospheric flow simulations is rest ...

2016

Analysis of lightning electromagnetic field propagation in mountainous terrain and its effects on ToA-based lightning location systems

Farhad Rachidi-Haeri, Marcos Rubinstein, Keyhan Sheshyekani, Mohammad Azadifar, Dongshuai Li, Zhaoyang Wang, Qilin Zhang

In this paper, we analyze the propagation effects on lightning-radiated electromagnetic fields over mountainous terrain by using a three-dimensional (3-D) finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. We also discuss the time delay error in the time-of-arri ...

Amer Geophysical Union2016

Fixed-wing Micro Aerial Vehicle for Accurate Corridor Mapping

Jan Skaloud, Martin Rehak

In this study we present a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) equipped with precise position and attitude sensors that together with a pre-calibrated camera enables accurate corridor mapping. The design of the platform is based on widely available model components ...

2015

Multi-scale landscape genomic models : the role of very high resolution digital elevation models in evolutionary biology

Kevin Leempoel

Environmental heterogeneity is one of the main actors of biodiversity and species adaptation as it exerts a selective pressure on observable characteristics of living organisms. Consequently, local adaptation favours certain genetic variants and, by doing ...

EPFL2015

Local Extremes In The Lidar-Derived Snow Cover Of Alpine Glaciers

Michael Lehning

Snow deposition and redistribution are major drivers of snow cover dynamics in mountainous terrain and contribute to the mass balance of alpine glaciers. The quantitative understanding of inhomogeneous snow distribution in mountains has recently benefited ...

Wiley-Blackwell2015

Hydrological Processes in a High Alpine Watershed

Raphaël Mutzner

Alpine hydrology is particularly challenging due to the complexity of mountainous terrain and the spatial and temporal variability of meteorological parameters such as precipitation, temperature and evaporation. Yet improving our understanding of hydrologi ...

EPFL2015

Automated Assessment of Digital Terrain Models Derived From Airborne Laser Scanning

Philipp Schär, Jan Skaloud

This paper presents the derivation of surface-related quality indicators describing the confidence-metrics of the final geo-products de- rived from airborne laser scanning (ALS). We first discuss the number of factors influencing the qual- ity of the digit ...

2012

Pose estimation of landscape images using DEM and orthophotos

François Golay, Devis Tuia, Timothée Produit, Christoph Strecha

In this paper, we propose a methodology for the estimation of the pose of oblique landscape images. Knowledge about the pose is needed for using such images in augmented reality applications or to allow projection of pixels in a GIS for spatial analysis. W ...

2012