2012 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest

09 February 2012, 8:46am

Composite of the optical, SAR, and LiDAR images of downtown San Francisco that were distributed for the contest.


The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) has organized an annual contest since 2006 for the purpose of evaluating existing methodologies at the research or operational level to solve remote sensing problems using data from a variety of sensors. During previous years, the contest focused on a variety of techniques, including pan-sharpening, classification, and change detection using optical, hyperspectral, and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data.

The contest is organized by the IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Technical Committee, which serves as a global, multi-disciplinary, network for geospatial data fusion, connecting people and resources. It focuses on educating students and professionals, and on promoting best practices in data fusion applications.

This year the contest is designed to investigate the potential of multi-modal/multi-temporal fusion of very high spatial resolution imagery. Three data sets of three different types (optical, SAR, and LiDAR) over downtown San Francisco were made freely available by DigitalGlobe, Astrium Services, and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). They include very high spatial resolution QuickBird, WorldView-2, TerraSAR-X, and LiDAR imagery. Optical and SAR data sets are composed of a total of eight images from two acquisition times in 2007 and 2011, as shown in the table below:

Sensor

QuickBird/WorldView-2
Acquisition 1 - 11 November 20071
Acquisition 2 - 9 October 2011

TerraSAR-X
Acquisition 1 - 5 December 2007, 16 December 2007, 27 December 2007
Acquisition 2 - 2 October 2011, 13 October 2011, 24 October 2011

LiDAR
Acquisition - June 2010


To enter the contest, participants are required to submit a manuscript on a research topic of their own choosing. Papers should describe in detail the problem addressed, the method used, and the final result.

Deadline: May 1st, 2012

The winning teams will receive monetary prizes as follows:

• First Place: $800
• Second Place: $500
• Third Place: $300

Additionally, as is tradition, a manuscript summarizing the winning teams’ work will be submitted to an IEEE GRSS Journal. To further enhance its impact in the community, the GRSS Data Fusion Technical Committee will support its open-access publication cost, a $3,000 value.

The contest is open not only to IEEE Members, but to everyone. Last year, almost 800 researchers from 95 countries participated in the contest, with the most entries from the USA, India, and Brazil. This year, more than 600 users from universities and corporations across the globe have registered in just over a month.

The IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Technical Committee would like to express its great appreciation to DigitalGlobe, Astrium Services, and USGS for donating these data sets to the scientific community and for their continuous support in providing resources for this initiative.

Geo: International