Wednesday 28 May 2014

ESPON Conference and NUIM publication scheme

Three posts in three days!  It has been a busy week, lots of news.

I'm off next week to Greece for the ESPON conference on 'Blue Growth' and 'Urban Poverty'

Linky

The conference is in Napflio, and it looks like a beautiful spot.


Having said that, the flights are usually delayed going out and we have a bus transfer at the airport we need to make. Added to that, Napflio is 180km from Athens airport so if we don;t make the bus we have some exploring to do...

I also got word this morning that my application to the NUIM publication fund was (partially) successful. I applied for publishing costs for two papers - one I mentioned in the previous post. The second hasn't been accepted yet, so they declined to cover that. Still - €1,475 covers the first paper nicely, and maybe I can get the costs for second covered elsewhere.

Everyone loves free stuff!


Tuesday 27 May 2014

Journal Paper

Ok, I know I posted yesterday but this is too big a milestone  not to have a quick update.

After a big delay trying to commercialise my research, and even bigger delay due to some slightly dubious dealings with another journal, I had my first paper accepted.

Calculation of Target-Specific Point Distribution for 2D Mobile Laser Scanners




Linky

After discussing the situation with the Professor at the NCG, he very kindly gave me permission to go for an open-access journal, Sensors, as rest of the available options were linked to said dubious journal. Open access journals bypass the traditional publication model by charging readers/libraries for subscriptions and move the cost to the author. I won't say I am overjoyed at having to pay for my first journal paper, or at not having a hard copy (when you picture your first journal paper during work on your thesis - it's a not a pdf), but I am delighted to have gotten it into such a high impact factor journal. It's higher than most of the more common subscription based RS journals, and I use their papers regularly. I have another one ready to go to Sensors's sister journal, Remote Sensing.

May there be many more.

Monday 26 May 2014

It will be alright on the night

Except it wasn't....

Bad weather and UAVs are not a great combination - and although the Falcon performed very well on other occasions (like the Portrane beach survey or Operation Cathach in the Shannon estuary) , the wind was too much for her on this project. Plus with an RTE camera crew filming the whole affair, it wasn't great timing...oh well, you can't plan everything...

The background
Last year we were on an RTE show called 'Science Squad' demonstrating the use of UAVs for agricultural surveys. (Not us in the image - but Stuart from Teagasc who did the satellite part of the show). The video is down now off RTE player for some reason....



After that, NCG were contacted by another RTE presenter and asked to help them with two new shows - one for forestry, and the other for monitoring coastal erosion - both with John Creedon. So after a few months we were headed down to Limerick and Dingle for two days of filming.

Forestry
The first site was a privately own forest near Abbeyfeale in Limerick. We used the UAV to identify areas of damage quickly and easily, and provided a significant saving in time when compared to manual investigations of sites. The wind was high, but the Falcon was up to the task (and up a tree for a short period).

Coastal erosion
Next stop was Dingle - and more specifically Dunbeg Fort, an old coastal fort that is about to drop into the sea.


The wind was too high at this site, and having heard horror stories from other UAV operators about Drones heading out to sea and being too under-powered to make their way back in land against strong headwinds, we had to admit defeat. We returned early the following morning to try and catch a lull in the weather but no luck. We spent the rest of the morning capturing spatial video on UbiPix and tried again in the afternoon, but the wind was too strong.

http://app.ubipix.com/playvideo.php?id=tAw8xA6Lhab

Two sites, one survey.

NCG 1 - Wind 1




About Me

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My name is Conor. I am a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. These few lines will (hopefully) chart my progress through academia and the world of research.