Geomorphometry 2015 - Announcement

Geomorphometry 2015: Conference and Workshops

email: closed

June 22-26, 2015 (Monday to Friday)

Geomorphometry for natural hazards geomodelling

HONORARY PATRONAGE

JM Prof. Dr Hab. Bronisław Marciniak,
Rector of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Dr Inż. Kazimierz Bujakowski,
Surveyor General of Poland

AIMS AND SCOPE

The interdisciplinary nature of geomorphometry makes it a key science for natural hazards: from land observations which can serve as ground truth to mathematical models and development of new computer software. Monitoring of Earth surface provides a growing amount of high resolution DEMs or LIDAR data which require a new kind of geomorphometric tools capable of handling, analyzing, and visualizing large quantities of data in real time. Contributions that address these issues are especially welcome, including methods for continuous monitoring at times and places where hazards occur, and the presentations on fast computational methods for near real time analysis of big elevation data. See the programme.

THEMES

Themes include but not limited:

Acquisition of high resolution elevation data
New algorithms and software for automated interpretation of digital elevation data
Modeling extreme processes on the Earth surface
Multi-scale automated mapping Earth surface changes
Working with continental-scale high resolution data
Simulating changes of the Earth surface relief
3D and 4D dynamics of Earth surface in selected areas

CONFERENCE PROGRAMME (OUTLINE)

Monday 22.06	Tuesday 23.06	Wednesday 24.06	Thursday 25.06	Friday 26.06
+Opening ceremony +Conference+Welcome banquet	+Conference +Official dinner	+Conference +Closing ceremony	+Workshops +Short field trip	+Full-day field trip

Conference proceedings will include up to 4 pages camera-ready-copy papers. Proceeding acceptance depends on reviews made by conference scientific committee. Conference will include keynote lectures, twenty-minutes oral presentations, posters, and 4-hour workshops.

PROGRAM CHAIRS

Zbigniew Zwoliński, Institute of Geoecology and Geoinformation, Poland
Jarosław Jasiewicz, Institute of Geoecology and Geoinformation, Poland
Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, NC, USA
Tomislav Hengl, ISRIC / Wageningen University and Research, the Netherlands

Conference secretariat (closed):

Director: Zbigniew Zwoliński
Head of GIS Lab, Chair of the International Association of Geomorphologists
Working Group on Landform Assessment for Geodiversity
Dzięgielowa 27#214 60-680 Poznań, Poland
phone: +48618296176

Vice-director: Jarosław Jasiewicz
Institute of Geoecology and Geoinformation
Dzięgielowa 27#221 60-680 Poznań, Poland
phone: +48618296196

Conference Treasurer: Magdalena Ratajczak-Szczerba,

Secretariat: Joanna Gudowicz, Alicja Najwer, Jakub Nowosad

Field trip organizers: Małgorzata Mazurek, Miroslaw Makohonienko

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

	Marco Giardino, School of Natural Sciences, University of Torino, Italy: “Multidimensional approach to natural instabilities in mountain areas: how geomorphometry can improve both hazard modelling and risk perception”
	Markus Metz, GRASS Development Team, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Trento, Italy: “Searching for water: hydrological modelling concepts in GRASS GIS”
	Lucian Drăguţ, West University of Timisoara, Romania: “Object-oriented geomorphometry”

INVITED LECTURES

	Tomasz Stepinski, Space Informatics Lab, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, United States: “Doing Geomorphometry with Pattern Analysis”
	Piotr Wężyk, Laboratory of Geomatics, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Poland: “Making the invisible visible – the DTM modelling in complex environment”
	Manfred Zink, Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Center, Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany: “TanDEM-X: A Challenging Radar Mission for Generating a New Earth’s Topography”
	Christopher Crosby, Open Topography Group, United States: “OpenTopography: Enabling Online and On-Demand Access to High-Resolution Topography Data for Natural Hazards”
	Tomasz Niedzielski, Institue of Geography and Regional Development, University of Wrocław, Poland: “Hydrological forecasting in real time: an experimental integrated approach”
	Steve Kopp, Environmental System Research Institute, Redlands, CA, United States: “Expanding the reach of Geomorphometry through Web GIS”

WORKSHOPS (to be updated)

The Geomorphometry.org/2015 workshops will be held on Thursday 25th June 2015. To register for these workshops you shall register for the whole conference i.e. conference participants have priority to participate. Conference participants may choose up to two workshops (one in the morning and one in the afternoon session). Participaton depends on order of the registration to the workshops.

A) Morning Session (c.a. 9-12.30)

GRASS GIS and R as a tool for large-scale geomorphometric mapping
(Jarek Jasiewicz)

World-wide DEM
(Jonathan de Ferranti)

ESRI ArcGIS Pro – new desktop application from Esri
(sponsored)

Hands-on intro to LiDAR processing with LAS tools
(Martin Isenburg)

A) Afternoon Session (c.a. 13.30-17.00)

Hydrological modeling in GRASS GIS
(Markus Metz)

Automated DEM data analysis using R + SAGA + Google Earth
(Tom Hengl)

ESRI ArcGIS Pro – new desktop application from Esri
(sponsored)

Radar interferometry for ground motion analysis
(Fabio Bovenga, Janusz Wasowski)

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are now closed.

KEY DATES

Extended abstracts due: 1 November 2014 20 December 2014 Closed
Notification of acceptance (revisions): After March 1 2015
Workshop proposals due: 1 February 2015
Final camera-ready digital manuscripts due: 1 May 2015
Early registration deadline: 1 May 2015
Conference date: 22-26 June 2015

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Alexander Brenning, University of Waterloo, Canada
Lucian Dragut, West University of Timisoara, Romania
Yongxin Deng, Western Illinois University, USA
Ian Evans, Durham University, UK
Igor V. Florinsky, Institute of Mathematical Problems of Biology, Russia
Carlos H. Grohmann, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Peter Guth, US Naval Academy, USA
Michael Hutchinson, Fenner School of Environment and Society Canberra, Australia
Steve Kopp, ESRI, USA
Robert A. MacMillan, LandMapper Ltd, Canada
Li Manchun, Nanjing University, China
Jozef Minár, Comenious University, Slovakia
Helena Mitasova, North Carolina State University, USA
Brian Lees, University of New South Wales, Australia
Wu Lun, Peking University, China
Takashi Oguchi, University of Tokyo, Japan
Scott Peckham, Rivix / University of Colorado, USA
Sebastiano Trevisani, University Iuav of Venice, Italy
Thomasz Stepinski, University of Cincinnati, USA
Lynn Usery, USGS Center for Excellence for GIS, USA
John P. Wilson, University of Southern California, USA
Liu Xuejun, Nanjing Normal University, China
Chenghu Zhou, Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources, CAS, China
Qiming Zhou, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
A-Xing Zhu, Nanjing Normal University, China

FEES AND ACCOMODATION

Regular	Students	Accompanying persons
€200 (early) €300 (late)	€150 (early) €180 (late)	€100

Conference official dinner (Tuesday): €40
Full-day trip (Friday): €50 (may be reduced later, depends on number of participants)

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed. The registration fees covered all sessions of the conference, proceedings, lunches, welcome banquet and coffee breaks.

Poznań has more than 250 hotels available at system vendors web pages (Booking.com, Expedia etc.), Direct contact (in English) with hotel is also possible via web pages, e-mail, phones. We do not make direct reservations in commercial hotels due to financial responsibility.

We pre-reserved (till the end of March 2015) more than 50 rooms in hotels and hostels. All hotels have direct connections (30 min) to Conference Hall and our volunteer guides will accompany participants during the passage. No special transport is necessary. We also arranged special discounted rates (at least 10 percent discount of the regular price) for Geomorphometry 2015 attendees. Reservations must be made directly through hostel/hotel email or reservation form. In reservation email, conference name “Geomorphometry 2015” should be included. Here is the list of recommended accommodation with its web pages.

Hostels

Polo-loco hostel
Reservation by: reservation email

Hill Hostel
Reservation by: reservation email

Hotels

Hotel Włoski
Reservation by:reservation email

Sheraton Poznan Hotel
Reservation by:reservation form

Hotel Forza
Reservation by: reservation email

TRAVEL POSSIBILITIES

By airplane

Direct flights to Poznań and Warsaw

‘Poznań-Ławica’ Airport offers a number of regular and low-cost flights. The airport is located in the city, 7 km from the city centre, in the vicinity of the route leading directly to the major city points. There are bus stops right in front of the passenger terminal and in its close vicinity. Currently four bus lines run directly between the airport and city center, one of which – L – is an express line connecting the airport with the main train station. The line 48, 59, L runs every 30 minutes. The night line (11:00 pm-5:00 am) 242 runs also to the city centre. Tickets (~1€ for 15 min) are available to buy at kiosks and ticket machines. Taxi ranks are located next to the arrival terminal. Course to city centre cost less than 12€ during daytime. Rental cars are available at the airport. More information at www.airport-poznan.com.pl

By train and bus

All trains coming to Poznań stop at Poznań Main Railway Station (Poznań Główny) in the city centre, walking distance from several hotels (see below). There are direct Euro-City and Inter-City train connections from Warsaw, Minsk, Kiev, Moscow, and from Berlin, Hannover, Brussels, Amsterdam. Bus Station is located next to the Poznań Main Railway Station . It provides both domestic and international transport services. In most cases participants coming by railway or bus do not need transportation to reach hotels. However in any case they can reach any point in the city using tram or bus - in the vicinity of the main railway hall there are bus and tram stops for several lines. Also night buses approach the stop. Taxi ranks are located next to the Main Hall and the West Railway Station exit. More at http://beta.rozklad-pkp.pl/en

By car

Main roads

Participants driving from East (Warsaw) and West (Berlin) can reach Poznań using A2 highway (via toll) or national route no. 92. From south (Praque) and north (Gdańsk and Szczecin) national route 5 or 3 and national route 11. All national routes except A2 are toll-free. The city centre is covered by the Parking Zone. Fare is collected for each vehicle parked within the zone. Drivers pay the parking fee in parkingmeters located along streets in the city centre. The Parking Zone borders are marked with B-39 road sign. We also offer a free parking at the Conference Veune since Sunday till Saturday.

URBAN TRANSPORTATION

Red dosts mark locations of selected hotels/hostels

Poznań has very good system of public transportation including trams, fast trams and buses. Buses and trams run regularly from 4:30am to 11:00pm (day service) and from 11.00pm to 4.30am (night service). Tickets for the public transport may be purchased in the Central Tickets Sales Points, newspaper kiosks, stores and super-markets, ticket machines, as well as on board in some trams and buses. there is direct fast tram connection from the city center to the Geo-Campus. Estimate time required to reach campus from city center does not exceed 30 minutes during the rush hours. More at http://www.mpk.poznan.pl/?lng=en

SPONSORS

This event is sponsored by:

Association of Polish Geomorphologists
International Association of Geomorphologists Working Group on Landform Assessment for Geodiversity
Head Office of Geodesy and Cartography
ESRI Polska

Whitebox Workflows Next Gen, a complete rewrite of the Whitebox geospatial analysis platform, is now publicly available for Python, R, and QGIS.

Built from the ground up in pure Rust, Whitebox Next Gen provides more than 700 geospatial analysis tools for geomorphometry, terrain analysis, spatial hydrology, LiDAR processing, remote sensing, vector GIS, and spatial statistics. All three interfaces run on the same high-performance backend, allowing users to work in scripts, notebooks, statistical workflows, or a familiar desktop GIS environment.

Whitebox Next Gen is not an incremental update to the previous Whitebox architecture. It replaces the earlier monolithic system with a modular, full-stack geospatial platform. Core capabilities for raster and vector I/O, coordinate systems and reprojection, vector topology, spatial indexing, LiDAR processing, and other foundational operations are implemented directly within the Whitebox codebase rather than delegated to external C or C++ GIS libraries. This approach provides consistent cross-platform behaviour, fewer system-level dependencies, tighter control over performance and correctness, and greater flexibility for continued research and development

Highlights

More than 700 tools for geomorphometry, hydrology, LiDAR, remote sensing, vector analysis, spatial statistics, and general geospatial processing
Publicly available interfaces for Python, R, and QGIS
A modular, high-performance backend written entirely in Rust, including wbprojection, wbraster, wbvector, wblidar, wbspatialstats, and wbtopology open-source (MIT/Apache licensed) backend libraries
Most of the 80+ tools that existed within the previous extension product have been migrated to the new Whitebox open core, including the tools for advanced surface curvature analysis and DEM processing
Native coordinate-reference-system handling and reprojection workflows via wbprojection
Expanded raster support (19 formats), including GeoTIFF, Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF (COGs), GeoPackage Raster, and JPEG2000
Expanded vector support (12 formats), including Shapefile, GeoPackage, FlatGeobuf, GeoParquet, GeoJSON, TopoJSON, and GML
Modern point-cloud support, including LAS, LAZ, COPC, E57, and PLY
A dedicated topology engine supporting robust vector analysis, network analysis, route-event workflows, and linear referencing
Local-first processing on Windows, macOS, and Linux
A consistent analysis platform across Python scripts and R workflows
A newly updated and more advanced QGIS Processing toolbox

Whitebox has particular strengths in terrain analysis, geomorphometry, spatial hydrology, and LiDAR processing. Whitebox Next Gen carries these areas forward while substantially expanding the project’s capabilities for vector analysis, remote sensing, modern spatial data formats, and reproducible geospatial workflows.

Get started

The geomorphometry community is invited to explore Whitebox Next Gen, test its tools and workflows, report issues, and contribute to the continued development of the project.

First round of the DEMIX exercise published final report

Global digital elevation models (DEMs) have become routine operational inputs across mapping, environmental monitoring, modelling and Earth-observation workflows. Their broad coverage and global availability have made them data that many practitioners simply take for granted. But knowledge of the terrain and topography of Earth’s surface is fundamental for monitoring and understanding terrestrial ecosystems and the planet’s habitability. For that reason, the CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) maintains a subgroup dedicated to digital topography and the quality of DEMs, the ‘Terrain Mapping Sub-Group (TMSG).

DEMs are representations of elevation in the form of a georectified grid, at global scale commonly derived from space-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) or stereoscopic optical observations, while regionally and locally airborne Laser induced detection and ranging (LIDAR) has become the primary source. DEMs can be classified as digital surface models (DSMs) when depicting the lower surface of the atmosphere or digital terrain models (DTMs) when depicting the top of the lithosphere (the Earth’s crust).

A wide variety of DEM products exist – each having different characteristics which suit different applications. It can be challenging to understand which of the available DEM products are fit for purpose for certain applications or regions. That is the practical gap addressed by the Digital Elevation Model Intercomparison Exercise (DEMIX) undertaken by TMSG. By exposing where widely used global DEMs agree, where they differ and how those differences affect rankings, the exercise delivered evidence to users for selecting a DEM rather than defaulting to one by habit.

DEM products were compared through a ‘wine contest,’ which identified requirements of openness, reproducibility, adaptability, and statistical rigour. The characteristics, evaluations, and ranking for each DEM were collected in a GIS database with over 50,000 entries. A quantitative assessment was carried out for each global DEM based on pixel-by-pixel differences of geomorphometric parameters against finer spatial resolution (1-5 m resolution) reference DEMs.

The study incorporates an unprecedented amount of high quality reference data covering a broad range of landforms and surface types, comparing their characteristics without resampling or interpolation. Users are invited to consult the results of DEMIX in order to make informed choices when needing to use a DEM, or in some cases a combination of the most relevant DEMs for their applications.

The final rankings of the wine contest, presented below, compared the six DEMs based on land cover (forest, urban, or barren), slope (cliff, steep, gentle, or flat), differences in elevation, slope and roughness, and statistical metrics.

Led by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), the CEOS Working Group on Calibration and Validation (WGCV) Terrain Mapping Subgroup (TMSG) established DEMIX in partnership with the International Society for Geomorphometry. Several members of the International Society of the Geomorphometry contributed significantly and we hosted various secssions at our latest conference. The exercise was performed over a three-year period starting in 2020, with community-wide calls for participation and an assembly of experts producing a number of peer-reviewed publications, culminating with a JRC reference report published in July 2026.

The objective of DEMIX was to propose a procedure to rank the available free and open global DEMs, taking into consideration user needs while promoting the implementation of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles. The exercise compared DEMs based on criteria for land cover and terrain slope categories, representative testing, and a statistically sound ranking approach. The report outputs tailored recommendations regarding available DEM products that are not limited to one domain, geographic area, or landscape type, with flexibility for different user needs and applications.

A major challenge in the comparison of the global DEMs were the varying formats, data, and metadata contents. The adoption of a common set of standards would enhance the quality and interoperability of global DEMs and streamline the exchange and utilisation of DEM data for both providers and users. DEMIX makes the following recommendations for data providers:

● Adopt a standardised grid layout, with complete grid definitions and encodings following ISO/OGC rules.

● Include vertical datum information as part of raster DEM files.

● Clearly indicate the product version in the file names.

● Participate in future DEMIX rounds, which serve as a neutral platform for independently evaluating products before their release.

● Provide high quality, finer resolution, accurate, and multi-temporal elevation data to be used as a reference alongside DEM products.

Global DEMs are indispensable operational geospatial datasets, but they should not be treated as error-free or interchangeable. DEMIX delivered to the global community a systematic and transparent method to help choose elevation products more intelligently and help define what better elevation measurements should look like in the future.