Yan Restu Freski and Wufan Zhao, winners of the ITC PhD Publication Award 2022

The publication aimed to contribute new knowledge on alteration processes in geothermal systems to support assessments of geothermal fields. More specifically, it aimed to differentiate hydrothermally altered rocks under different moisture and temperature conditions by measuring laser return intensity values in a laboratory experiment.

The publication is among the first to successfully test the use of laser return intensity values to distinguish rocks with different hydrothermal alteration phases. This is not only interesting from the scientific point of view but also has practical relevance for the airborne mapping of geothermal surfaces. The jury has identified this publication as a winner because of the rigour of the experiment and to highlight the significant contribution of lab work in the analysis of remote sensing imagery. 

Prof Dr Martin van Maarseveen awarded the check to Restu Freski Y.

The awarded publication by Yan Restu Freski is called: The effects of alteration degree, moisture and temperature on laser return intensity for mapping geothermal manifestations

Article’s ref: Restu Freski, Y., Hecker, C., van der Meijde, M., & Setianto, A. (2021). The effects of alteration degree, moisture and temperature on laser return intensity for mapping geothermal manifestations. Geothermics, 97, 1-9.

The objective of the work was to extract roof structure information, in particular, vectorized building rooflines and structures, from very high-resolution remote sensing imagery in an end-to-end trainable way. Such information is key for the development of detailed 3D building models. The well-written publication is a solid piece of work which combines mathematics, data science, and statistics to delineate rooflines. It guides the reader systematically through the deep learning methodology and improves our scientific understanding of the potentials and challenges of such a methodological approach.

Besides the scientific insights on the use of deep learning for roof structure information extraction, the article also has practical relevance. The result helps to enrich current digital building information models. The jury has selected this article as a winner because of the critical reflection on what did not work well and needs further improvement. The jury considers such reflections essential to scientific advancement in our field so that other scientists and deep learning experts can learn from such shortcomings. 

Prof Dr Martin van Maarseveen awarded the check to W. Zhao

The awarded publication by Wufan Zhao is called: Extracting planar roof structures from very high resolution images using graph neural networks

Article’s ref: Zhao, W., Persello, C. and Stein, A., 2022. Extracting planar roof structures from very high-resolution images using graph neural networks. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, 187, pp.34-45.

The ITC PhD Publication award is an annual award presented to a PhD candidate being the first author of an outstanding scientific publication, although this year there were two selected winners for the first time. The prize consists of an award certificate and €1000. A jury, consisting of professors and a PhD candidate, evaluates the nominated publications based on the criteria of presentation, innovation, scientific rigour, practical/scientific relevance and “interesting to read”.

With more than 350 PhD candidates from 2015 to 2022, pITCom organizes many activities for PhD candidates such as Science Day, a Kick-Off Meeting or Meet the Professors, as well as the event to present the ITC PhD Publication Award. The aim of these activities is to create a conductive environment for communications and collaborative networks between PhD candidates. Learn more about pITCom via utwente.nl/pitcom