Thomas James Pingel

Binghamton University | SUNY Binghamton · Department of Geography

Terrain classification of LIDAR point clouds is a fundamental problem in the production of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). The Simple Morphological Filter (SMRF) addresses this problem by applying image processing techniques to the data. This implementation uses a linearly increasing window and simple slope thresholding, along with a novel applica...

Slope exerts a powerful influence on the route selection processes of humans. Attempts to model human movement in hilly and mountainous terrain that have largely focused on least-time route transformations can be improved by incorporating research that suggests humans systematically overestimate slopes. Such research suggests that cost functions de...

Although shaded relief, or hillshaded, images are a widely used method to represent high-resolution (~1-m) digital surfaces derived from airborne laser (or LiDAR) scans, such displays may become difficult to interpret when they include surface features like buildings, roadways, and natural vegetation. One possible alternative as a visualization of...

Determining the likelihood and severity of tornado disasters requires an understanding of the dynamic relationship between tornado risk and vulnerability. As population increases in the future, it is likely that tornado disaster frequency and magnitude will amplify. This study presents the Tornado Impact Monte Carlo (TorMC) model, which simulates t...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2499/abstract http://chubasco.niu.edu/pubs/Haberlie%20et%20al.%202015%20QJRMS.pdf This study assesses the impact of urban land use on the climatological distribution of thunderstorm initiation occurrences in the humid subtropical region of the Southeast United States, which includes the Atlanta, Georgi...

Indoor spaces are essential to most humans' lives. Furthermore, in many cases, buildings are shared indoor environments that contain diverse people and resources. Spatial patterns of use are important but under-examined aspects of human-building interactions. This study leverages perspectives from human-environment geography and mechanical engineer...

Topography and the computational mesh grid are fundamental inputs to all two‐dimensional (2D) hydrodynamic models, however their resolutions are often arbitrarily selected based on data availability. With the increasing use of drone technology, the end user can collect topographic data down to centimeter‐scale resolution. With this advancement come...

While satellite-based remote sensing techniques are often used for studying and visualizing the heat distribution in cities, they are limited in terms of spatial resolution, view bias, and revisit times. In comparison, modern Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with infrared sensors allow very fine-scale (cm) data to be collected over smaller...

Disaster damage assessments are a critical component to response and recovery operations. In recent years, the field of remote sensing has seen innovations in automated damage assessments and uncrewed aerial system (UAS) collection capabilities. However, little work has been done to explore the intersection of automated methods and UAS photogrammet...

A considerable body of research exists outlining ecological impacts of surface coal mining, but less work has explicitly focused on human health, and few studies have examined potential links between health and surface coal mining at fine spatial scales. In particular, relationships between individual birth outcomes and exposure to air contaminants...

While recognition of the dangers of extreme heat in cities continues to grow, heat resilience remains a relatively new area of urban planning. One barrier to the creation and successful implementation of neighborhood-scale heat resilience plans has been a lack of reliable strategies for resident engagement. In this research, the authors designed a...

Consumer-grade drone-produced digital orthoimagery is a valuable tool for conservation management and enables the low-cost monitoring of remote ecosystems. This study demonstrates the applicability of RGB orthoimagery for the assessment of forest health at the scale of individual trees in a 46-hectare plot of rare southern Appalachian red spruce fo...

Vegetation heights derived from drone laser scanning (DLS), and structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry at the Virginia Tech StREAM Lab were utilized to determine hydraulic roughness (Manning's roughness coefficients). We determined hydraulic roughness at three spatial scales: reach, patch, and pixel. For the reach scale, one roughness value was...

While UAV-based imaging methods such as drone lidar scanning (DLS) and Structure from Motion (SfM) are now widely used in geographic research, accurate water surface elevation (WSE) measurement remains a difficult problem, as water absorbs wavelengths commonly used for lidar and SfM feature matching fails on these dynamic surfaces. We present a met...

Small island developing states (SIDS) face high vulnerability to natural hazards; thus, understanding risk perception in SIDS is an essential step toward reducing vulnerability. A case study in the eastern Caribbean's Commonwealth of Dominica, which has a notable volcanic risk, was selected to explore local risk perception, using a mixed-methods ap...

SciPy is an open-source scientific computing library for the Python programming language. Since its initial release in 2001, SciPy has become a de facto standard for leveraging scientific algorithms in Python, with over 600 unique code contributors, thousands of dependent packages, over 100,000 dependent repositories and millions of downloads per y...

Urban forests are dynamic and change in response to both human and natural forces. To effectively monitor and manage urban forests, periodic inventories are needed to ensure that information about them is current and comprehensive. This task has traditionally been accomplished by manual ground-based field surveys, or more recently using GIS techniq...

We developed and tested different pedagogical treatments using an Augmented Reality (AR) Sandbox to teach introductory geoscience students about reading topographic maps at five institutions in both pilot and full implementation studies. The AR Sandbox treatments were characterized as 1) unstructured play, 2) a semi-structured lesson, and 3) a stru...

SciPy is an open source scientific computing library for the Python programming language. SciPy 1.0 was released in late 2017, about 16 years after the original version 0.1 release. SciPy has become a de facto standard for leveraging scientific algorithms in the Python programming language, with more than 600 unique code contributors, thousands of...

The raster data model is a widely used method of storing geographic data. The model most commonly takes the form of a grid-like structure that holds values at regularly spaced intervals over the extent of the raster. Rasters are especially well suited for storing continuous data such as temperature and elevation values, but can hold discrete and ca...

Game-based Web sites and applications are changing the ways in which students learn the world map. In this study, a Web map-based digital learning tool was used as a study aid for a university-level geography course in order to examine the way in which global scale cognitive maps are constructed. A network analysis revealed that clicks were negativ...

While risk and associated hazard characteristics are important components of disaster formation, the consequences of hazards are often driven by underlying human and built-environment vulnerabilities. Yet, there has been little research conducted on how the evolving contributors of risk and vulnerability commingle to produce disaster potential. In...

We present the results of an experimental comparison of existing and new methods to estimate tree height from LiDAR data and to subsequently estimate tree diameter allometrically from species and height. Ground truth of tree height was established using a LaserAce Rangefinder to directly measure the height and diameter of a sample of 952 parkway tr...

This study examines how tornado risk and societal exposure interact to create tornado disaster potential in the United States. Finescale historical and projected demographic data are used in a set of region-specific Monte Carlo tornado simulations to reveal how societal development has shaped, and will continue to shape, tornado disaster frequency...

For the past decade, archaeologists have been using LiDAR or Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS)-based methods to uncover trace signatures of human civilization in the landscape. A new technique called bonemapping involves processing the ALS data to create a map-like representation of the landscape, which aids in the detection and interpretation of trace...

Students in a college-level World Geography class used a custom-developed web mapping tool as a study aid. Interactions with the system were tracked, allowing us to explore the ways in which students dynamically construct global cognitive maps. These findings will be incorporated into the next round of AI-based tutoring software.

Perceptually Shaded Slope Maps (PSSMs) are a type of LIDAR-derived visualization developed in support of disaster relief and emergency response in urban areas. The technique involves transforming raw LIDAR data into a Digital Surface Model, and then applying a graytone colormap using cognitive slope as the basis for the transformation. We present t...

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have become more and more integrated into day to day professional and personal activities such that we can use them for everything from tracking a favorite fishing hole to cataloging stormwater outlets. As the technology has become more ubiquitous, the programs associated w...

We present the results of a study that investigated the interaction of strategy and scale on search quality and efficiency for vista-scale spaces. The experiment was designed such that sighted participants were required to locate “invisible” objects whose locations were marked only with audio cues, thus enabling sight to be used for search coordina...

The depth of valley incision and valley volume are important parameters in understanding the geologic history of early Mars, because they are related to the amount sediments eroded and the quantity of water needed to create the valley networks (VNs). With readily available digital elevation model (DEM) data, the Black Top Hat (BTH) transformation,...

Perceptually Shaded Slope Maps (PSSMs) are a type of LIDAR-derived visualization developed in support of disaster relief and incident response in urban areas. The technique involves transforming raw LIDAR data into a Digital Surface Model, and then applying a graytone colormap using cognitive slope as the basis for the transformation. We present th...

It has been nearly a decade since the public release of Google Earth, and it has now become a common tool for teaching Geography content as well as elementary GIS principles. A less-well utilized tool is the Google Public Data Explorer (GPDE), which allows easy visualization of both spatial and non-spatial statistical content, letting the user expl...

Perceptually Shaded Slope Maps (PSSMs) are a type of LIDAR-derived visualization developed in support of disaster relief and incident response in urban areas. The technique involves transforming raw LIDAR data into a Digital Surface Model, and then applying a graytone colormap using cognitive slope as the basis for the transformation. We present th...

Airborne laser scanning methods (e.g., LiDAR) offer an unprecedented ability to capture very high resolution spatial data over a wide extent, which can then be transformed into DEMs and three dimensional models. Visualization of the DEM directly can be important, especially when LiDAR-derived data must be visualized in near real-time, as might be t...

Airborne laser scanning methods (e.g., LiDAR) offer an unprecidented ability to capture very high resolution spatial data over a wide extent, which can then be transformed into DEMs and three dimensional models. Visualization of the DEM directly can be important, especially when LiDAR-derived data must be visualized in near real-time, as might be t...

This paper summarizes recent efforts in the use of automation to create geographic immersive virtual environments on a test bed of the University of California, Santa Barbara campus and nearby neighborhood of Isla Vista. In particular, we discuss how aerial LiDAR point clouds can be processed and fused with aerial video sources, and distributed on...

Ground segmentation of LIDAR point clouds is a fundamental problem in the production of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). The Simple Progressive Morphological Filter (SMRF) addresses this problem by applying image processing techniques to the data. This implementation uses a linearly increasing window and simple slope thresholding, along with novel...

While digital navigation assistants have improved greatly since the mid-1990s, most systems still produce a single route based on extremely limited criteria. Performance and user satisfaction could be improved by better incorporating individual strategies into route-selection algorithms. Strategies in this sense go beyond simple and particular crit...

Search, like navigation, is a key element of spatial strategy expression. Although many studies have looked at search strategies for the visually impaired, relatively few have looked at search strategies for sighted individuals. We present the results of several studies that investigate the interaction of strategy and scale on search quality and ef...

This study presents a method to assess the contributions of 21st-century sea-level rise and groundwater extraction to sea water intrusion in coastal aquifers. Sea water intrusion is represented by the landward advance of the 10,000 mg/L iso-salinity line, a concentration of dissolved salts that renders groundwater unsuitable for human use. A mathem...

While digital navigation assistants have improved greatly since the mid-1990s, most systems still produce a single route based on extremely limited criteria. Performance and user satisfaction could be improved by better incorporating individual strategies into route-selection algorithms. Strategies in this sense go beyond simple and particular crit...

Slope exerts a powerful influence on the route selection processes of humans. Attempts to model human movement in hilly and mountainous terrain that have largely focused on least-time route transformations can be improved by incorporating research that suggests humans systematically overestimate slopes. Such research suggests that cost functions de...

The paper outlines a pilot test on the UCSB Wearable Computer developed in conjunction with Project Battuta. The UCSB Wearable incorporates geographic context information (location and orientation) to display an electronic digital map to a user via a Heads-Up Display (HUD). Features of the custom designed Geographic Referenced Graphic Environment (...

There is currently no human-computer interface specifically designed for the alternative interaction modes used on wearable systems for input and output. For a geographically oriented wearable computer system a graphical user interface (GUI) is indispensable, yet contemporary window systems using the desktop metaphor are unsuitable for wearable com...

Current computer network defense strategies explicitly rely on spatial metaphors to create structures that behave similarly to those found within historical physical fortifications. A more historically and geographically informed study of security in general, and fortification in particular, could provide great insight to development of improved de...

Project Battuta, a joint Digital Government Initiative project being conducted by Iowa State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been working on integrating heterogeneous geospatial information resources using flexible architectures for adaptive data collection in mobile environments (Nusser et al., 1999). One of our mob...