Ismail Rakip Karas

Using LiDAR technology in forestry activities

Managing natural resources in wide-scale areas can be highly time and resource consuming task which requires significant amount of data collection in the field and reduction of the data in the office to provide the necessary information. High performance LiDAR remote sensing technology has recently become an effective tool for use in applications of natural resources. In the field of forestry, the LiDAR measurements of the forested areas can provide high-quality data on three-dimensional characterizations of forest structures. Besides, LiDAR data can be used to provide very high quality and accurate Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the forested areas. This study presents the progress and opportunities of using LiDAR remote sensing technology in various forestry applications. The results indicate that LiDAR based forest structure data and high-resolution DEMs can be used in wide-scale forestry activities such as stand characterizations, forest inventory and management, fire behaviour modeling, and forest operations.

A 3D-GIS Implementation for Realizing 3D Network Analysis and Routing Simulation for Evacuation Purpose

The need for 3D visualization and navigation within 3D-GIS environment is increasingly growing and spreading to various fields. When we consider current navigation systems, most of them are still in 2D environment that is insufficient to realize 3D objects and obtain satisfactory solutions for 3D environment. One of the most important research areas is evacuating the buildings with safety as more complex building infrastructures are increasing in today’s world. The end user side of such evacuation system needs to run in mobile environment with an accurate indoor positioning while the system assist people to the destination with support of visual landscapes and voice commands. For realizing such navigation system we need to solve complex 3D network analysis. The objective of this paper is to investigate and implement 3D visualization and navigation techniques and solutions for indoor spaces within 3D-GIS. As an initial step and as for implementation a GUI provides 3D visualization of Corporation Complex in Putrajaya based on CityGML data, stores spatial data in a Geo-Database and then performs complex network analysis under some different kind of constraints. The GUI also provides a routing simulation on a calculated shortest path with voice commands and visualized instructions which are intended to be the infrastructure of a voice enabled mobile navigation system in our future work.

Automatically Extracting 3D Models and Network Analysis for Indoors

The areas such as emergency services, transportation, security, visitor guiding, etc. are the subjects of 3D network analysis applications. Especially, the problem of evacuating the buildings through the shortest path with safety, has become more important than ever in a case of extraordinary circumstances (i.e. disastrous accidents, massive terrorist attacks) happening in complex and tall buildings of today’s world.

Integration of CityGML and Oracle Spatial for implementing 3D network analysis solutions and routing simulation within 3D-GIS environment

3D navigation within a 3D-GIS environment is increasingly getting more popular and spreading to various fields. In the last decade, especially after the 9/11 disaster, evacuating the complex and tall buildings of today in case of emergency has been an important research area for scientists. Most of the current navigation systems are still in the 2D environment and that is insufficient to visualize 3D objects and to obtain satisfactory solutions for the 3D environment. Therefore, there is currently still a lack of implementation of 3D network analysis and navigation for indoor spaces in respect to evacuation. The objective of this paper is to investigate and implement 3D visualization and navigation techniques and solutions for indoor spaces within 3D-GIS. For realizing this, we have proposed a GIS implementation that is capable of carrying out 3D visualization of a building model stored in the CityGML format and perform analysis on a network model stored in Oracle Spatial. The proposed GUI also provides routing simulation on the calculated shortest paths with voice commands and visual instructions.

SmartEscape: A Mobile Smart Individual Fire Evacuation System Based on 3D Spatial Model

We propose SmartEscape, a real-time, dynamic, intelligent and user-specific evacuation system with a mobile interface for emergency cases such as fire. Unlike past work, we explore dynamically changing conditions and calculate a personal route for an evacuee by considering his/her individual features. SmartEscape, which is fast, low-cost, low resource-consuming and mobile supported, collects various environmental sensory data and takes evacuees’ individual features into account, uses an artificial neural network (ANN) to calculate personal usage risk of each link in the building, eliminates the risky ones, and calculates an optimum escape route under existing circumstances. Then, our system guides the evacuee to the exit through the calculated route with vocal and visual instructions on the smartphone. While the position of the evacuee is detected by RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology, the changing environmental conditions are measured by the various sensors in the building. Our ANN (Artificial Neural Network) predicts dynamically changing risk states of all links according to changing environmental conditions. Results show that SmartEscape, with its 98.1% accuracy for predicting risk levels of links for each individual evacuee in a building, is capable of evacuating a great number of people simultaneously, through the shortest and the safest route.

Developing a 3D Routing Instruction Engine for Indoor Environment

The need for 3D visualization and navigation within 3D-GIS environment is increasingly growing and spreading to various fields. When we consider current navigation systems, most of them are still in 2D environment that is insufficient to realize 3D objects and obtain satisfactory solutions for 3D environment. For realizing such a 3D navigation system we need to solve complex 3D network analysis. The objective of this paper is to investigate and implement 3D visualization and navigation techniques and develop 3D routing instruction engine for indoor spaces within 3D-GIS. As an initial step and as for implementation a Graphical User Interface provides 3D visualization based on CityGML data, stores spatial data in a Geo-Database and then performs complex network analysis. By using developed engine, the GUI also provides a routing simulation on a calculated shortest path with voice commands and visualized instructions.

Identification of column edges of DNA fragments by using K-means clustering and mean algorithm on lane histograms of DNA agarose gel electrophoresis images

Gel electrophoresis (GE) is one of the most used method to separate DNA, RNA, protein molecules according to size, weight and quantity parameters in many areas such as genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology. The main way to separate each molecule is to find borders of each molecule fragment. This paper presents a software application that show columns edges of DNA fragments in 3 steps. In the first step the application obtains lane histograms of agarose gel electrophoresis images by doing projection based on x-axis. In the second step, it utilizes k-means clustering algorithm to classify point values of lane histogram such as left side values, right side values and undesired values. In the third step, column edges of DNA fragments is shown by using mean algorithm and mathematical processes to separate DNA fragments from the background in a fully automated way. In addition to this, the application presents locations of DNA fragments and how many DNA fragments exist on images captured by a scientific camera.

Automatic Generation of 3D Networks in CityGML and Design of an Intelligent Individual Evacuation Model for Building Fires Within the Scope of 3D GIS

Designing 3D navigation systems requires addressing solution methods for complex topologies, 3D modelling, visualization, topological network analysis and so on. 3D navigation within 3D-GIS environment is increasingly growing and spreading to various fields. One of those fields is evacuation through the shortest path with safety in case of disasters such as fire, massive terrorist attacks happening in complex and tall buildings of today’s world. Especially fire with no doubt is one of the most dangerous disaster threatening these buildings including thousands of occupants inside. This chapter presents entire solution methods for designing an intelligent individual evacuation model starting from data generation process. The model is based on Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) which is one of the most preferred artificial neural network architecture in classification and prediction problems. We focus on integration of this model with a 3D-GIS based simulation for demonstrating an individual evacuation process.