ProMeRe an der GEOBIA

An der dritten international Konferenz zur "Geographic Object-based Image Analysis" vom 29. Juni - 2. Juli 2010 in Ghent, Belgien, war Natalie Lack mit dem Beitrag "Object-based change detection for a cultural-historical survey of the landscape - from cow trails to walking paths" vertreten. Die Tagung bringt Wissenschaftler und Anwender aus der ganzen Welt zusammen, um neue Entwicklungen im Bereich der geographischen objektbasierten Bildanalyse zu präsentieren und diskutieren.

Abstract
Historical maps, aerial images and other historic documents are finding their way into the digital world. This offers new possibilities but also requires adapted technologies and interdisciplinary approaches. The ProMeRe project connects historic, architectural and planning methods with remote sensing and geoinformation technologies. It aims to analyse the development of tourism and its effects in an alpine environment over the last 150 years.
We present an object-based change detection approach with IMAGINE Objective for the monitoring of country roads and walking paths networks in the project area. Changes in these networks contribute essential information for historic research questions concerning the development of tourism and its impact on the landscape. IMAGINE Objective employs feature models which work on objects produced by image segmentation and various other pixel-based algorithms which, after being vectorised, can be processed by geometric and textural parameters. This process is used and optimised for the extraction of the walking path network from high resolution colour ortho imagery of 2000 and 2004.
The results show that the similarity of scree and rocks with walking paths is a major challenge. In comparison of different feature extraction models “centerline detection" yields the best results for walking path network detection. Preliminary change detection tests using a semi automated post-classification approach show reliable results. For this project, the applied methods prove to be useful to detect changes in the walking path network in the example imagery even without producing a complete extraction of all walking paths and country roads. The approach will be extended to the whole project area and additional mostly older black/white sets of ortho imagery.

ProMeRe an der Int. Tagung „Tourism and Seductions of Difference”

An der internationalen Tagung „Tourism and Seductions of Difference” vom 9.-12. September 2010 in Lissabon wird Silvi Scheuerer zum Thema “Ordering Place or the seductive View from the Hotel Bellevue“ referieren. Organisiert wird die Tagung von Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC), the Network Centre for Anthropological Research (CRIA) and the Tourism-Contact-Culture Research Network (TOCOC).

Abstract:
Lying on the north-south route through Switzerland many people passed through Andermatt around the 1850s. However, a new kind of traveller soon joined business transients and migrant workers: a bourgeois solvent upper class started to travel to the mountains bringing new demands to the hospitality industry. Based on a perception of the Alps through literature and art tourists claimed for hosting places that would allow for gazing at the „Alpine theatre“. Just like in other Alpine regions local hosts picked up on the established urban hotel so that between 1850 and 1890 next to numerous small hotels also three Grand hotels opened their doors.

After the construction of a tunnel passing through underneath Andermatt since 1882 transients ceased to travel through the village. In order to attract visitors the whole area needed to be adapted to the ideal notions and requirements of tourists. These of course tended to be somewhat paradox, e.g. the longing for the pristine at the same time as for a modern luxurious lifestyle. Nevertheless, for the village tourism meant to abandon earlier economic strategies connected to transport business and agriculture and organize life in a whole new way around tourist aesthetic criteria. In this paper I will trace the process of reordering through looking at the example of street cleaning – one of the ways a tourist aesthetic was implemented in Andermatt.