Development areas in this country, especially large-scaled reclaimed lands for housing are vulnerable to disasters caused by earthquakes. The Ministry of Land, Infratructure, Transport and Tourism in Japan, decided to investigate such lands according to “Guideline for the investigation into the topographic changes” in order to prevent them from disasters.

Taking the above into consideration, the investigation is now in process, following the regulation low of the reclamation of housing sites. In this paper, first, common problems with the disaster reduction for such sites are proposed. Second, an idea on first-step screening investigation among a series of whole investigations, which may become proper jobs for surveyors, is also shown.

In late years, there are a lot of demands that GPS and GIS engineers need. High education is necessary to bring up an excellent engineer in business and graduation thesis making, therefore, “First Year Educations” is very important. We perform “First Year Educations” which used Handy GPS for GPS and GIS engineer in Kyusyu Kyoritsu University. Many students are interested in this class. We got good evaluation from students. In addition, we report it about the practical use which we used handy GPS. Handy GPS is inferior precision in comparison with the GPS surveying for business use. But, if we understand the precision of the purpose of use, the handy GPS becomes the effective tool.

FKP (Flaechen Korrektur Parameter) surveying in real time mode was evaluated in accuracy and performance compared with DGPS in the dense wood. Both approaches are coupled and named as FKP (Forest Kinematic Positioning) for establishing Forest Base Map Specification. Acquired results fulfill sufficiently accuracy requests in Cadaster surveying and Forest GIS as Spatial GeoInformation Database nationwide. Evaluation test and feasibility study were organized in Shinshu-University (Nagano Prefecture, Japan) ,affiliated with authors. Accuracies and efficiency verified FKP (Forest Kinematic Positioning) as best demonstrated available technology for forest surveying and mapping projects, establishing Forest GIS initiatives in forest areas in Japan , faced with earth environmental issues, in the forthcoming decades.

The geoidal height is the height between reference ellipsoid and geoidal surface which is made of equal gravity value points. This height is easily calculated using the GSI's Geoidal Height Calculating Program. But the accuracy of this program is not clearly known for working out a local geoidal height. The purpose of this research is to validate the accuracy of this GSI's program comparing with the GPS／leveling method in a local area and to visualize its geoidal inclination and, moreover, to discuss the applicability of GPS survey from the standpoints of geoidal height and ellipsoidal height. The demonstration experiments have been surveyed at CST Funabashi campus.

There are hopes that the development of photogrammetry will make it possible to determine the exterior orientation parameters, i.e. the position and attitude of a camera, without using any reference points. In order to satisfy this requirements, the exterior orientation of a camera is determined using an inertial sensor. This paper reports on the development of a portable inertial terrestrial photogrammetry camera and on basic investigations needed for its practical application. This camera is a suitable combination of an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) and a commercially available digital camera installed on a backpack. The system (IMU and the connected digital camera) enables us to carry it on one's back and walk around the site where a disaster took place taking a photograph of the site safely. Furthermore, it also gives us an advantage to use our hands freely when needed without any restriction at the dangerous place such as a disaster site, mentioned before. In order to carry out photogrammetry using this inertial camera, effective photographic methods and measurement accuracy under various photographic conditions were experimentally investigated.

It is important to understand the characteristics of suspended solid transportation in every water area to administer the water quality. For that purpose, many researchers have simulated suspended solid transportation using numerical models and measured suspended solid concentration by sampling and analyzing water. With these points as background, we attempted to grasp the distribution of suspended solid concentration in a lake using echo intensity obtained by Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP). Results showed that 1) Suspended solid concentration could be estimated from echo intensity. 2) Characteristics of sediment resuspension were expressed approximately during the strong wind period.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) opened the Fourth Assessment Report to public in May 2007. In the report of the Working Group I, the following two major impacts on the environment of coastal zone and low-lying land were indicated: 1) The mean sea level will increase up to 18-59cm by the end of this century. 2) The strength of the tropical cyclone will be intensified. The report of the Working Group II showed that about 1 million people will suffer from the disaster of the storm surge. Thus, the future flood damage is anticipated to increase, in particular, in low-lying coastal areas like Hue city, Vietnam. In this study, the future sea level were assumed, and flood area was simulated based on the level flooding method. In addition, the flood area was also simulated using the inundation level recorded in 1999, which was found in the field survey. As a result of this study, the distributions of land use in the simulated flood area were detected. And, it was proven that the agricultural area is the major part of the damaged areas by the coastal flood.

We will discuss a “technology to innovate and re - organize the functions of parks and greens to meet social needs” as taken up in “the third five - year Plan for parks and greening technology” set forth by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. This study aims at proposing the construction of a system in which the behavior of park users is considered as one of the management items. We surveyed Kairakuen in Mito, Ibaraki, which is one of the three beautiful parks in Japan .We performed a quantitative analysis of park use based on Kairakuen management data, using users' behavior and park facilities locations as variables, and sampled the key points for park management.

Miniaturization of sensors has brought about recent development of MEMS technology and consequent cost reduction. As a result, large-scale sensor networks can be built for monitoring of infrastructure. Using such networks, an attempt was made to measure ground vibration using sensor IC tags with MEMS acceleration sensors to detect vulnerability of ground conditions. For this purpose, we built sensor networks at many locations on railway embankments of the Ibaraki Kotsu Minato Line in Hitachinaka City Ibaraki prefecture. We carried out measurements of ground conditions and, through analyses of measured data, we examined the applicability of the sensor network as a health monitoring technique for railway embankments.

In Japan, regular cross-sectional surveying is the standard measuring method employed in the management of river sediment migration. However, at present, the problem of cost means that cross-sectional measurement pitch can not be taken with precision. In this paper we introduce a method combining the ground type laser scanner and Virtual Reference Station, Real-Time Kinematics GPS as an example of basic data acquisition in which three-dimensional time-series data from a river channel is obtained and verified.

In recent years, people have become more concerned of ensuring security and safety of everyday life, and demand for spatial databases to facilitate disaster prevention and counter-criminal activities in urban areas is increasing. To efficiently build such databases incorporating traits of each coverage area, we need to establish efficient methods to grasp the characteristics and development history of the study area. This paper reports a trial to implement methods to realize such database building by utilizing airborne remote sensing techniques such as to capture shape information of buildings from laser scanner data. Moreover, we state advantages of the new methods over traditional survey methods which are usually laborious, as well as the results of the trial and the topics for future work.

Moroyama town, where is located in the southwestern part of Saitama Prefecture is a historical town including more than 80 ancient burial mounds. These ancient burial mounds locate in brushland. The diameters of these ancient burial mounds are about 5-15m, but there are also bigger mounds more than 20m diameter and keyhole-shaped mounds. Furthermore, there are small mounds less than 5m diameter which shows only top part of the mounds, Therefore, it is supposed that some of the small ancient burial mounds are not yet found because the ancient burial mounds are covered with trees.

The authors have been concentrating on developing an efficient extraction method for ancient burial mounds which are covered with trees using laser scanning data. However, efficient filtering method and threshold values for robust extraction of the mounds from smaller to bigger are issues.

With this motive, filtering and thresholding approach for an efficient extraction from smaller to bigger mounds using pyramid filters are proposed in this paper. The most remarkable points of this approach are its ability to extract from smaller and bigger mounds efficiently. In particular, the proposed pyramid filtering show the ability to extract smaller mounds less than 5m diameter, and 11 mounds are newly extracted by the method. Furthermore, in order to perform visual investigation, landscape animation for the mound area is generated in this paper.

Airborne LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) system has been widely used for land survey and bathymetric survey since the late of 1990s. And it has known as powerful tool for surveying wide area within short period. The advantage of Airborne LiDAR system is quite usable taking snapshot of variable surface information such as snow depth of non-permanent snow covered area like in Japan. In this study a series of airborne LiDAR survey was performed around Tateyama caldera (Toyama prefecture in Japan) under two different seasons. September 2003 was selected as a survey season for bare earth terrain model. And March 2007 was selected for snow surface elevation model. The extent of survey area is more than 72 square kilometers. We also performed careful geometric calibration based on the adjustment with reference points which coordinate was previously surveyed by static GPS. We present the distribution of snow depth of this area which was estimated by subtraction of those DEMs.

Education of surveying in universities has been a matter of question in education time and its contents. The departments related to civil engineering have changed their name, revised their curriculum and the number of such universities has increased. In education of surveying in universities, improvement of education contents, ensuring enough education time and education in which the students can master knowledge and technologies as engineer of survey are desired.

This paper reconstructed structural damage caused by the atomic bombing in Hiroshima by using GIS based on the digital map created by us of the whole urban area of this city just before this bombing. In Part 1 of this paper, a distribution map of damage and the book titled “Damaged Structures in Hiroshima Speak Out” were made into a GIS (Geographic Information System). In Part 2 of this paper, adding the book titled “Record of War Damage Caused by Atomic Bombing in Hiroshima”, aerial photographs taken just before the bombing, aerial photographs taken just after the bombing, and 3D animation of buildings existing just before the bombing in the urban area of Hiroshima to the GIS, we attempted to make the materials complete. Using the aerial photographs, we were now able to clearly visualize urban Hiroshima just before the atomic bombing and the damage immediately after. The 3D animation was able to recreate town scenes in the Hiroshima city area at that time realistically.

Preparing the survey map in dam projects has been required much time and expenses. It has been also difficult to obtain the accurate data by aerial surveys generally at areas of steep mountain forest especially in summer season. Nevertheless, aerial surveys called “the airborne LiDAR system,” which was introduced at Koishiwaragawa dam construction project in September 2007, was successfully achieved for the first time in obtaining accurate and high-density data of the topographical map with a scale of 500, that is, level 500. As a result, it is expected that the expenses and time on the survey of this project will be considerably reduced, and furthermore, structural designs of the project will be achieved efficiently. This paper shows the brief result of the airborne LiDAR system and describes the possibility of its future usage of its system.

Digital watermarking technique is used to protect intellectual property such as copyright of digital content producers. Several methods have already been established for embedding watermarks into digital contents such as audio, video and still image data. In addition, a few researchers have developed watermarking techniques for vector map data. However, there is currently no watermarking method for random point clouds which don't possess chain-type data of the kind found in vector maps. In this paper, we present a digital watermarking technique for random point data produced by airborne lidar scanner.

In this paper, we described Web Photogrammetry: 3-dimensional measurement system using stereo pair aerial photos on WWW (World Wide Web) browser. On this system, we can browse stereoscopic images on WWW browser to measure 3-dimensional features in the real world. Stereo pair aerial photos are delivered from WWW server with these orientation parameters for this system. If feature data are delivered from WWW server, features are overlaid on stereoscopic aerial photo. We believe that anyone having stereoscopic display and network can measure 3-dimensional objects without photogrammetric knowledge and experience by using Web Photogrammetry.