Advances in Mobile Mapping Technology

The growing market penetration of Internet mapping, satellite imaging and personal navigation has opened up great research and business opportunities to geospatial communities. Multi-platform and multi-sensor integrated mapping technology has clearly established a trend towards fast geospatial data acquisition. Sensors can be mounted on various platforms, such as satellites, aircrafts or helicopters, terrestrial vehicles, water-based vessels, and may even be hand-carried by individuals. Mobile mapping refers to a means of collecting geospatial data using mapping sensors mounted on a mobile platform. Its development was primarily driven by the advances in digital imaging and direct-georeferencing technologies. With the escalating use of telecommunication networks and the increasing availability of low-cost and portable sensors, mobile mapping has become more dynamic, and even pervasive. The book addresses a wide variety of research issues in the mobile mapping community, ranging from system development to sensor integration, imaging algorithms and mobile GIS applications. This book will provide researchers and practitioners a good overall view of what is being developed in this topical area.

Dr. C. Vincent Tao is Director of Microsoft Virtual Earth Business Unit. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was Canada Research Chair in Geomatics, Professor and the Director of the GeoICT Lab at York University in Toronto, Canada. He was the Conference Chair of MMT’2004. He is currently serving as Chair for the ISPRS WG III/3 (2004-2008). His research interest ranges from on-line mapping, 3D web, local search, Lidar and image based feature extraction and 3D modeling.

Dr. Jonathan Li is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of Waterloo, Canada. From 2001-2006, he was Assistant/Associate Professor and the Director of GeoVELab at Ryerson University in Toronto. He was the Conference Secretary of MMT’2004. He is currently serving as Co-Chair for the ISPRS WG IV/8 (2004-2008). His research interests include remote sensing, 3D urban modeling, intelligent object extraction from imagery, spatial data integration for disaster management, and WebGIS.