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school |
AHS (BRG Auhof in Linz) with
- computerscience
as a main subject since the 3rd year in secondary school
languages:
- english: 2 years primary school, 8 years secondary school, 4 years communication within EU projects
- french: 5 years secondary school
- italian: 3 years secondary school
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university |
Geography is a science that deals with lots of different research fields, which was one of the main intentions why I chose it for my studies. At the University in Vienna geography is split in two parts.
The first part provides an overview of all different kinds of fields which are involved in this science:
- physical geography
- human geography
- cartography
- regional geography of Austria and middle Europe
- statics for geographers
- theroetical geography
For more information please read the pages of
geography homepage
In the second part one has to increase the knowledge in one of four courses. Cartography was the one I decided for because of my general interest in computer science and maps in general.
degree course scheme:
- basics of surveying and topography
- photogrammetry and basics of remote sensing
- 3D visualization
- applied cartography
- thematic mapping
- map editing
- science in cartography
GIS was not included in this old roadmap so far, although it has influenced cartography dramatically. Nevertheless our institute provided lots of courses which dealt with GIS and offered a perfect technical equipment for the students to increase the knowledge in this field.
For more information please read the pages of
computer cartography 
GIS commercial |
Long practical experience with ESRI software ArcInfo/ArcGIS since version 6.x VBA programming with ArcObjects ArcView 3.x and various extensions FME from safe.com |
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Open Source GIS |
PostGIS UMN Mapserver SVG |
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GIS specifications |
Overview on OGC implementation specifications, More advanced in WMS – SLD, WMC, WFS, WCS, GML in early versions |
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Web specifications |
Experience with XML, XHTML, HTML, CSS, SVG, CGI, SQL, SOAP, WSDL |
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XML/Schema development |
XML Spy Oxygen |
Operating Systems | LINUX (SUSE) |
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Network services |
webserver (Apache, Xitami) versioning (CVS, SVN) some knowledge in DNS, NFS, … |
Imageprocessing | Photoshop |
Desktop Mapping | Freehand |
Desktop Publishing | MS-Office Programs |
Database, Statistics |
MySQL |
Programming languages | C/C++, Turbo Pascal |
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Modelling |
Basic knowledge in UML |
Interface programming | Cross platform library QT |
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Management |
Wiki Systems (twiki) |
In this part I will present some of my cartographic projects which I created, or was part of during the last years.
The first example was developed by Julia Beckel, Martin Galanda and me in winter 1996/97 in a course called "Kartographisches Spezialpraktikum". It was the prototype for the thesis of Martin who worked at the cartographic visualization of avalanche risks.
The idea of the following example was to calculate the topographic variables slope and aspect (which have an enormous impact on the avalanche risk) combine, classify and visualize them in a so called avalanche risk map. The whole data processing has been realized through GIS like all following examples.
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(size in Kb = 222) |
This part shows some examples I rendered with a RayTracing program on the base of DTMs, which were created with ArcInfo. For some pictures I had areal images and soilcoverages which I could render above the DGM.
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Schneeberg with trails, and gridlines as RayTrace-objects, areal image at 2.5m res. | Panoramic view Großlitzner (Silvretta), red lines=ascent, blue lines=descent surveyed with differential GPS, areal image 2.5m | Bielerhöhe (Silvretta) |
The first time I came in touch with multimedia and cartography was a seminar with Prof.Jean-Claude Müller where we used the authoring system Director from Adobe. I decided to create an interactive, multimedia climbing atlas of the Höllental (Rax/Schneeberg, lower austria), based on a topographic map (Schneeberg-Rax Karte 1:25.000 BEV). I tried to combine this map with the guidebook of Kurt Schall (climbingtours) through interactions of the user. In the guidebook there are lots of informations, topos and pictures which should all be integrated in this atlas. Informations about the ascent, location and descent of the tours are visualized in the map. Some screenshots:
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The way to the location from different cities e.g. Linz | Footpath to the different climbing-tours | Interactive topos and fotos |
In summer 1998 I took part on an excursion with Prof. Trimmel, an expert in all topics related to karst, where we also visited lots of caves like the Mammuthöhle or the Dachsteinrieseneishöhle. Because of my personal interests in caves I decided to visualize the longest ones of the Dachstein-region, instead of the final exam. In one image I rendered them with the use of a satellite image (SPOT combined with LANDSAT TM) and visualized it as a panoramic view seen from the near Sarstein. The result is shown here:
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(size in Kb = 89) |
The following interactive map shows the endversion of an overviewmap of Mount Rainier, a volcano near Seattle in state Washington. This mountain was one of our destinations in a cartographic excursion I took part in 1998.
In a seminar the semester before, one task was to create a map of Mount Rainier in austrian style, which I realised in coorperation with Julia Beckel and Andreas Palkovic. 90 percent of our data we took from the USGS via Internet, the rest was digitized from analogues maps. The cliffdrawings were made from swiss students at the ETH in Zurich, with a program developed by Prof. Lorenz Hurni.
The final result is also shown below. Please click in one of the boxes in the map to see the high resolution pictures:
(please consider the time the thesis has been written (2000), many of the statements about GPS are not valid any more)
Nowadays GPS is used in many different civilian applications. Since the beginning, geodesy dealt with this satellite technology and used it for their purposes at which it seems that GPS is going to displace more and more classical methods of surveying. Also navigation has been revolutionized by this system. Through the sudden fall in price of the LowCost receivers this method of geographical positioning is available for nearly everybody, but it has not yet succeeded in alpinistic applications. On the one hand the reason therefore ist the lack of fundamental cartographic and GPS-relevant Know-How of the users and on the other hand there are no cartographic products existing which respond to the special needs of GPS users.
The main question of my thesis:
Where can we as cartographers contribute to make the usage of GPS navigation more efficient and faultless?
The biggest problem of using GPS in high mountain region is the relief, which makes it sometimes impossible to receive a minimum of four satellite signals to calculate the actual three dimensional position. This influence of the relief (also called obstruction) is a fact which should be visualized as a continuous phenomenon in a map so that the user is able to distinguish between areas of high probability of signal reception and those with a low probability of signal reception. The obstruction of the relief can be evaluated by a DHM-analysis which has been developed within my thesis. The idea behind this analysis is the definition of a number of line of sights which calculate the maximum obstruction in every cardinal point and build the arithmetic middle of those values. The result is an indicator for the obstruction of the defined position. To get a continuous information this calculation has to be executed for all cells in the grid of the DHM. This result gets classified and is now ready for a cartographic visualization.
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Obstruction of the Schneeberg |
Accuracy is the next problem which limits the application of GPS in high mountain region. The administrator of NAVSTAR-GPS, the US Department of Defense, implemented an error to the system (called SelectiveAvailability) so that the theoretical accuracy of a pseudo range measurement (used for navigation) is about ± 100m. In real world the avarage position accuracy of a LowCost receiver is in the range of ± 30m. The system errors are not the only problem, also the cartometric measurements in analogues maps to derive waypoint data for the navigation, is a source of uncertainty. To avoid this effect, those measurements could be made in a GIS, but these systems are not available for the normal alpinist. The World Wide Web gets more and more widespread so I decided to implement a GPS-Map-Interface in this new medium. Every GPS relevant information like obstruction, waypoints, geodetic datum and grid should be integrated in such an interface. Different functions to define waypoints, to transform them in other datums and grids and to save them in different formats make the data available for different GIS or GPS receivers.
Some parts of this interface are shown here:
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GPS-map-interface |
PROTOTYPE GPS-map-interface
If you are interested in, you can download my thesis:
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Click on image to view my thesis |
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Interactive SVG map of canyons in Austria |
This SVG map is integrated in a website about canyons in Austria (http://canyon.carto.net/). It displays various map layers that provide different interactions and can be manipulated by a legend. Canyon symbols lead directly to a detailed description and weather station symbols display the current meteorolgical details. The global weather webservice located at xmethods.com provides the actual weather data for about 13 austrian weather stations. Every hour a cron job on the server downloads the data and projects the location with the project4 webservice described below.
This map unfortunately only runs under IE6.x and the SVG 3.0 plugin from Adobe. If this plugin is not installed on your computer please download it from http://www.adobe.com/svg/viewer/install/
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Interactive SVG map |
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Project4 as webservice |
Project4 is an open source library that provides over hundred different cartographic projections. To make this tool available for web projects that don't have their own GIS on their server, a webservice implementation seemed to be an ideal solution. In this webservice project I encapsulate the project4 functionality in a SOAP interface that can be used by everybody who is aware of scripting and CGI programming!
For a detailed description see:
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Project4 webservice |
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GPS training courses |
In cooperation with Martin Galanda and Dieter Schimanek we arrange GPS training courses for mountain guides of the austrian alpine club Naturfreunde Österreich.
Our last course took place at the Rax plateau close to Vienna:
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GPS seminar at the Rax plateau |
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STATLAS |
The project STATLAS was the reason for my relocation to the ETH in Switzerland for which I work now since August 2001. The Statistical Atlas of the European Union [STATLAS] is a multimedia approach to the development of electronic atlases with a state of the art design and functionality, enabling the user to study the wealth of statistical information, to carry out comparative studies and to document proposals and solutions on the basis of an objective and up-to-date source of information. The consortium members are:
For more information about the project please go to:
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STATLAS |
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ORCHESTRA |
Full title: Open Architecture and Spatial Data Infrastructure for Risk Management
Short description:
The aim of ORCHESTRA is to improve the efficiency in dealing with risks by developing an open service architecture for risk management that is based on de-facto and de-jure standards. Emerging specifications out of the INSPIRE and GMES activities will be incorporated. Software adhering to the ORCHESTRA architecture will be able to interoperate, to a certain extent even at a semantic level, and organisations will be able to cooperate much more efficiently as it is currently possible.
For more information about the project please go to:
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ORCHESTRA |
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Geoportal Canyoning |
The idea for this geoportal results from the geo related information I have from my Austrian canyoning portal. After experimenting with a visualization approach using SVG, I could see that this was a rather static approach which couldn't be integrated into other webportals easily. So I decided to go for a database driven portal that supports OGC standards for integrating geodata from other servers on the one side, and to provide my canyoning information as WMS on the other side. The portal is implemented as a 100% open source solution using Suse Linux, Apache webserver, UMN mapserver, PostGIS and Perl with a simple HTML-CSS-JavaScript user interface.
Just try the prototype:
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Geoportal Canyoning |
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Canyons in Google Earth |
Google Earth met with enormous response, particulary those people who have never worked with geodata before. The detailed satellite images combined with a DEM and a very fast 3D viewer can be incorporated with own data via the KML format. The Geoportal Canyoning is able to export its data into KML files on the fly. See a first example:
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Canyons in Google Earth |
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WMS of Natural Earth |
Tom Patterson from the US National Park Service created Natural Earth, made primarily from data and imagery collected by NASA satellites and graphically enhanced by the NPS. The combination of shaded relief and landcover colors brings the physical world to life and encourages readers to explore. The data was originally created as a base for general mapmaking. With my implementation I publish this great dataset to be integrated in web mapping applications as well.
Therefore I use the WMS specification, which is an OGC standard for exchanging and combining map data via the web.
The image below has been created on-the-fly when you accessed this webpage, it is not statically saved on my server. Just right-click the image, get the url with all parameters, paste it in a new browser window and play around with the parameters:
WMS of Natural Earth |
Thanks a lot to Tom for providing the data!
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scientific publications |
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others |
In summer 1995 I also began to study physical education at the USZ (Universitäts Sport Zentrum). With big enthusiasm I did most of the practical exercises, but due to lack of time I decided to concentrate my energy on cartography.
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alpine |
Especially in the last 4 years I spent a lot of my spare time with alpine sports (see also hobbies). That´s why I took part on many advanced trainings in this subject. Two of them were organized by the USZ, under the guidance of austrian mountain guides:
- 1997 Bergsteigen / Bergwandern
- 1998 Spezialfach Bergsteigen / Bergwandern
In winter 1998 and summer 1999 I took part on two
- seminars for alpine security
organized by mountain guide Sigfried Wasserbauer and alpine doctor Dr. Klaus Kritzinger.
please also visit my curriculum vitae
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links |
