2018.05 | MSc Project | Enjoying the journey

(c) https://medium.com/swlh
(c) https://medium.com/swlh

 

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard
C. P. Cavafy, “The City” from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Translation Copyright © 1975, 1992 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Reproduced with permission of Princeton University Press.
Source: C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems (Princeton University Press, 1975)
– Original Greek Poem

2018.03 | Virtual Geoscience Conference (August 2018)

Hi,

just a gently reminder that the abstract submission deadline for the 3rd Virtual Geoscience Conference is approaching very fast… have you submitted your abstract yet?

The 3rd Virtual Geoscience Conference (VGC) provides a meeting place for researchers and industry members at the forefront of technological developments and latest applications of geomatics and visualization tools in the geosciences. This year, the bi-anuual conference will be held in Kingston (Canada) and is being organized by an incredible team at Queens University, BGC and the Geological Survey of Canada. Interested?

We are looking forward to reading your latest virtual-geoscience-themed abstracts. Submissions must be made using the online submission page.

We are excited to have four keynote speakers confirmed for VGC 2018:

1)    Dr Nick Hedley, Director of the Spatial Interface Research Lab, Simon Fraser University, Canada.

2)     Dr Joseph Wartman, Director of Natural Hazards Reconnaissance Facility at the University of Washington, USA.

3)     Dr Regula Frauenfelder, Physical Geographer at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute.

4)     Dr Helen Reeves, Science Director for Engineering Geology & Infrastructure at the British Geological Survey.

Short Course and Field Trip

We will be offering a short course on remote sensing applications to geohazards research and a local field trip exploring the local geology of the Kingston area on August 22nd, 2018. More details can be found on the VGC short course page. Participants can also register on the conference registration page.

 

2018.02 | New position | Lecturship in Engineering Geology + Geohazards

Hi to everyone,

I have some more good news to share with you, there is a new lecturer in Engineering Geology at the Institute of Applied Geosciences at the University of Leeds that you might know… Please, have a look at my new position on this institutional website.

I acquired a series of academic responsibilities in our master degree in Engineering Geology during this and forthcoming years, such as being the module leader of “Hazards, Resilience and Sustainable Engineering” , supervise several smart students during their dissertation projects, collaborating during the fieldwork in Cyprus, establishing new collaborations with my great colleagues at the School of Earth and Environment and continue with my exciting research avenues, that’s great!

I’ll keep you updated,

All the best,

Antonio

 

 

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2018.01 | ERC-Responder project | New website

I would like to share with you the new website of the RESPONDER project, a five years ERC grant (2017-2021) leaded by Dr. Poul Christoffersen and prof. Bryn Hubbard. The project is aiming to resolve subglacial properties, hydrological networks and dynamic evolution of ice flow on the Greenland Ice Sheet and I am contributing on tasks related with the acquisition and treatment of 3D point clouds generated using time-lapse cameras and drones.

The RESPONDER team consists of an international group of scientists, primarily at the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge (including Dr. Poul Christoffersen [PI], Dr. Marion Bougamont, Dr. Antonio Abellan, Tun Jan “TJ” Young, Tom Chudley and Samuel Cook) and the Centre for Glaciology at Aberystwyth University in Wales (Bryn Hubbard [Co-PI] and Dr. Sam Doyle). You can find some more details about the team members here

Take a look at the excellent website, and do not hesitate to follow us in twitter.

Best,

Antonio

2017.12 | New policy on open source code [Computers & Geosciences]

As a recently appointed member of the editorial board of Computers and Geosciences journal, I would like to share with you the new open-source policy that I totally support:

Computer code availability: For each software-accompanied submission, a compulsory software availability section is requested. Open-source code is both a way of ensuring reproducibility and an incentive for the distribution and re-use of research software.

New submissions should provide the following information: Name of code, developer and contact address, telephone number and e-mail, year first available, hardware required, software required, program language, program size, and details on how to access the source code.

Public repository: Upon acceptance of the manuscript, program code files will be placed on the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG) server for public access.

Interested?  Take a look at the complete guide for authors here

2017.10 | RockModels project | new website

I would like to share with you the new website of the RockModels project,  a three years project (2017-2019) lead by profs. Jordi Corominas and Nieves Lantada from the Technical school of Catalonia (UPC).

This new scientific journey, as the logical continuation of the RockRisk project (2014-2016), will provide more effective tools and algorithms for predict and prevent rockfalls. Interestingly, the project is involving several entities interested in the project results, which have committed to participate in annual monitoring meetings, in order to facilitate an excellent transfer of knowdlege to practitioners and other interested stakeholders.

Needless to say, I am proud to continue collaborating all these years with this excellent work team, including my friends and colleagues of the UPC (Jordi Corominas, Nieves Lantada, Josep Gili, Josep Moya, Felipe Buill et al.) and the University of Twente: Olga Mavrouli.

Take a look at the excellent website, and do not hesitate to follow the project in ResearchGate (to be added soon) and comment/contribute there.

As a warm-up, here I leave you a screen-capture of the project website, enjoy! 🙂

 

2017.10 | Are we ready for sharing data in public repositories?

Dear colleagues,

More and more journals are now inviting authors to deposit their data to data repositories as part of the manuscript submission process (see for instance the editorial and policy of Nature on this respect and the interesting story of the editor in chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research).

In this line, Mendeley has recently launched Mendeley Data, a cloud-based repository to store scientific data and ensuring it is easy to access and cite… Interested? take a look to their website: https://data.mendeley.com/, and feel free to contribute with your data 🙂

Editorials are clearly aligned with this aim, and Elsevier has recently become a signatory to Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines in order to gain transparency, open sharing, and reproducibility, as recently claimed here.

 

 

 

2017.09 | Short courses – GSA Annual Meeting in Seattle

Are you a PhD student / Early Stage Researcher looking into 3D?
Then, don’t miss out this opportunity to attend to the following short courses during the Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting, Oct.2017    🙂
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502. High Resolution Topography & 3D Imaging 1: Introduction to Terrestrial Lidar Scanning
Fri. 20 Oct., 8am – 5pm
Co-Sponsor: UNAVCO
Abstract: This one-day course will provide faculty, students, and professionals with an introduction to Terrestrial Lidar Scanning (TLS – a.k.a ground-based lidar) for research and education. TLS provides high-resolution three-dimensional images of geologic features and has emerged as a powerful tool for applications ranging from outcrop mapping to an analysis of earth-surface processes. The course will focus on TLS technology, data collection, processing and analysis, and examples of science and educational applications. A combination of lectures and hands-on demonstrations of TLS equipment and data processing will be used. Limited financial support is available for students (see the UNAVCO Short Course Series page). This course can be taken alone or together with “High Resolution Topography and 3D Imaging II: Introduction to Structure from Motion (SfM) Photogrammetry” (course #513) for an introduction to 3D imaging technology that compliments TLS.
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513. High Resolution Topography & 3D Imaging 2: Introduction to Structure from Motion (SfM) Photogrammetry
Sat. 21 Oct., 8am – 5pm
Abstract: Structure from Motion (SfM), a photogrammetric technique that uses overlapping images to construct 3D surface models, is quickly emerging as a valuable research and education tool in geodesy, geomorphology, structural geology, and related disciplines. Images can be collected with a standard consumer-grade camera, making SfM a low-cost tool that compliments other 3D imaging technologies, such as terrestrial and aerial laser scanning (LiDAR). SfM can be collected from a hand-held camera or an airborne platform such as an aircraft, tethered balloon, kite or UAS (unmanned aerial system), enabling 3D imaging of features ranging in size from decimeters to several kilometers. This one-day course will provide faculty, students, and professionals with an introduction to SfM technology, data collection and processing, and examples of science and educational applications. A combination of lectures and hands-on demonstrations of SfM equipment and data processing will be used. This course can be taken alone, or together with “High Resolution Topography and 3D Imaging I: Introduction to Terrestrial Lidar Scanning” (course #502) for an introduction to 3D imaging technology that compliments SfM.
More info: http://community.geosociety.org/gsa2017/science-careers/courses
Early registration deadline: 18 September!!

2017.09 | Annual conference of the “UK Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Society“

I will be participating as a member of the scientific committee on the forthcoming annual conference of the UK Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Society, to be held in London from 5th to 8th September this year in the Department of Earth Science & Engineering, at the Imperial College London. After working in the UK for almost a year now, I believe this will be an excellent opportunity for networking at national level. Conference themes will be dealing with topics including: UAV technology and science,  Close range measurements, laser scanning & LiDAR,  Ground deformation, change and SAR,  Geosciences,  Ice and fire,  Oceans and atmospheres,  Land surface science,  Spectral & hyperspectral science,  Hazard, risk & insurance,  Structure from motion & remote site investigation, etc…. are you interested in coming? You can find some details on the image below, just feel free to submit an abstract 🙂

Also, you will find all the information here: http://www.rspsoc.org.uk/index.php/rspsoc-events/rspsoc2017.html