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Geomorphometry 2021 - General Information

About Perugia

Perugia is the capital of the Umbria Region (the Green Heart of Italy), and is located in central Italy. The town is of Etruscan originand contains more than 160,000 inhabitants.

The Acropolis of Perugia (about 490 m a.s.l.) has been selected by the Etruscan people for the topographic arrangement on two contiguous hills, Colle del Sole and Colle Landone, and for the water resources.

The oldest urban center is enclosed by walls dating from the 3rd Century BC, that are themselves incorporated into a medieval fortification (14th Century).

The latter fortification encompasses the five villages (or districts) that have developed along the five main hill ridges towards the surrounding suburbs. This expansion took place in five directions, corresponding to the five Etruscan doors and has given the city a stellar shape that Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti compared to the fingers of a hand.

Its rich history is well represented by the works of art housed in the most representative cities, and the numerous monuments that characterize the urban profile of its historic center. Among these monuments is first and foremost the Fontana Maggiore, built in the 13th Century. After construction of the aqueduct through which water was channeled to the center of the city, and which is still accessible today. In the Piazza IV November there is the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, which was completed during the 15th Century. The Palazzo dei Priori built between the 14th and 16th Century, is now the Town Hall of the Municipality of Perugia, and contains the National Gallery of Umbria, the region’s most important museum. Here visitors can admire works of artists such as Pinturicchio, Perugino, Pietro della Francesca, Gentile da Fabriano, and other work of arts covering a time span between the 13th and 19th Century.

Among the many other architectural works worthy of mention is Rocca Paolina, a fortress built by Pope Paul III in 1540, at the end of the Salt War, in which Perugia fought against the Papal State imposing taxes on the importation of marine salt. Only one wing remains of this monumental building, designed by Sangallo the Younger, one of the greatest military engineers of the 16th Century. The area under the building, the major underground citadel, is still accessible, however, having become one of the symbols of the city. It is now crossed by a path of escalators leading from the main bus terminal up to the city center.

Perugia is the home of one of the oldest universities in Italy, founded in 1308, as attested by the Papal Bull issued by Pope Clement V certifying the birth of the Studium Generale. In addition to the University of Perugia is the University for Foreigners, founded in 1925, being the oldest university in Italy addressed to foreigners, and which specializes in the teaching and diffusion of the Italian language and culture worldwide.

In this highly suggestive scenario, and rich history, art and science surroundings, many cultural activities take place, making Perugia one of the most dynamic and attractive Italian cities. The best globally-known initiatives range from international music festivals (Umbria Jazz) to promotion of economic activities and crafts (UmbriaLibri), and from local confectionery production (Eurochocolate) to large conferences in the field of media and information (International Journalism Festival), and science (Perugia Science Fest or The Isle of Einstein).

Tourist guides

Reaching Perugia

Here you can find some information about how to reach Perugia and contacts of the major Italian transportation companies.

By Bus (from Rome-Fiumicino Airport to Perugia)

If you take the Sulga bus (www.sulga.it) from Rome-Fiumicino Airport, you will arrive at Piazza Partigiani, the bus station in the Perugia city center.

The bus station at the airport is located in the parking area in front of Terminal 3, arrivals level. To find the bus station (Sulga bus) to Perugia please go outside the arrival gate and walk to your right until the end of terminals, following the “Bus Station” sign. You should see a series of bus parking spaces. The Sulga buses to Perugia arrive at the bus stops 35 or 36

There is no timetable for the Sulga busses available at the Rome-Fiumicino Airport. Please check the latest timetable in advance:

Sulga Busses Service

The one-way bus fare from Rome-Fiumicino Airport to Perugia or vice versa is about € 22, and the roundtrip fare is about € 36 (valid for one month). The tickets can be purchased on board and by cash only or in advance on the Sulga website.

By train

Plese check the official website of TRENITALIA (National railways)

Telephone +39 075 5006186 www.trenitalia.com

By plane

San Francesco d’Assisi - Umbria International Airport - Perugia 12 km from Perugia Telephone +39 075 592141 www.airport.umbria.it

Amerigo Vespucci Airport - Florence 160 km from Perugia - 235 km from Terni Telephone +39 055 3061300 www.aeroporto.firenze.it

Leonardo da Vinci International Airport - Rome 210 km from Perugia - 120 km from Terni Telephone +39 06 65951 www.adr.it

Galileo Galilei Airport - Pisa 230 km from Perugia - 300 km from Terni Tel. +39 050 849300 www.pisa-airport.com

By car

A1 Motorway Florence-Rome Exits: Valdichiana (follow traffic signs for Terontola-Perugia junction), Chiusi-Chianciano, Orte(follow traffic signs for Perugia-Cesena), Attigliano, Orvieto, Fabro www.autostrade.it/en/index.html

A14 Motorway Bologna-Bari Arriving from the North, exits at Rimini (follow traffic signs for Città di Castello), Fano (follow traffic signs for Gubbio) Arriving from the South, exits at Ancona Nord (follow traffic signs for Gubbio), Pescara (follow traffic signs for Terni via L’Aquila-Rieti), Civitanova Marche (follow traffic signs for Foligno-Perugia) www.autostrade.it/en/index.html

Dual carriage-way E45 Cesena-Orte Crosses Umbria from top to bottom

COVID 19

We planned the 2021 edition of the conference to be a mixed in-person and online event.

We are working to understand if this is still allowed by the pandemic situation. The rule to participate in indoor activities in Italy, effective August 6th, is that a “green pass” (electronic certificate of full vaccination) is mandatory. Indoor activities include restaurants, cinemas, concerts and conferences. It looks like, effective September 1st, a “green pass” will also be necessary to travel by plane or train, but this is still under debate.

Please check this page for updates about the possibility of in-person attendance and upcoming regulations on this page. And please check with your country’s travelling regulations before making plans to travel to Italy.

For further information please refer to the institutional web page of the Italian Ministry of Health.

Geomorphometry 2021 - Announcement

Geomorphometry 2021: Conference and Workshops

The Geomorphometry Society and the Organizing Committee are pleased to announce the sixth Geomorphometry Conference to be held in Perugia, Italy, September 13-17 2021. The event is hosted by the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection of the Italian National Research Council (CNR IRPI) and the Department of Physics and Geology of the University of Perugia. Details on past editions of the conference are on the geomorphometry.org website.

Conference website: http://geomorphometry2021.org

The previous edition of the conference was postponed due the global pandemic. Contributions to the conference were evaluated by the scientific/organizing committee, and authors were notified of acceptance/rejection of their extended abstract; revised abstracts were collected into a volume entitled “Geomorphometry 2020 Conference Proceedings” edited by M. Alvioli, I. Marchesini, L. Melelli & P. Guth and published by CNR Edizioni (Rome, 2020). Individual contributions and the whole volume can be downloaded here.

Authors were invited to extend their contributions to full article length, and submit them for pubblication in a special issue of Transactions in GIS, entitled “Geomorphometry 2020” which wil be published in the third quarter of 2021 (Volume 25); submissions for the 2020 special issue are currently closed.

The 2021 conference will tentatively be a mixed in presence - online event, so that whoever can/want to travel to Perugia is welcome to do so, but people will still be able to participate in the conference remotely. Please refere to the Covid-19 link on the main page for further and updated information about this. For online presenters: we are aware of the different time zones issue; we are working on it.

Submissions to the 2021 event are now close and submitted papers have been peer reviewed; contributions accepted for the 2020 will be retained for the 2021 event. Based on the actual number of new accepted contributions we will consider publishing a new conference proceedings and/or a new journal publication.


Perugia, Italy - Venue of Geomorphometry 2021

Geomorphometry is the science of quantitative land surface analysis. It gathers various mathematical, statistical and image processing techniques that can be used to quantify morphological, hydrological, ecological and other aspects of a land surface. Common synonyms for geomorphometry are geomorphological analysis, terrain morphometry or terrain analysis and land surface analysis.

Aeolian dune modelling with LiDAR and SfM-MVS

Github repository containing scripts and associated supplemental material (csv files, etc) for the paper:

Grohmann,C.H.; Garcia,G.P.B.,; Affonso,A.A; Albuquerque,R.W., 2020. Dune migration and volume change from airborne LiDAR, terrestrial LiDAR and Structure from Motion-Multi View Stereo. Computers & Geosciences, 143:104569.
View article at publisher (paywalled): http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2020.104569
Open Access preprint (same content as article, different formatting): https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06186

Link to GitHub repository: https://github.com/CarlosGrohmann/scripts_papers/tree/master/garopaba_als_sfm_tls

This paper presents an evaluation of Structure from Motion-Multi View Stereo (SfM-MVS) to obtain high-resolution elevation data of coastal sand dunes based on images acquired by Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA).

The analyzes were made using GRASS-GIS trough python scripts. Denoising of SfM-MVS DEMs were made with WhiteBox. Although the DEMs cannot be shared in GitHub (due to space limitations), the scripts can be used as an educational resource.

The LiDAR and SfM-MVS datasets can be accessed at:

Difference between LiDAR DEM (2010) and SfM-MVS DEM (2019) for the Garopaba dune field, in southern Brazil

This study was supported by the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), Brazil grants #2009/17675-5 and #2016/06628-0 and by Brazil’s National Council of Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq grants #423481/2018-5 and #304413/2018-6 to C.H.G.

Geomorphometry 2018 - Programme

Geomorphometry 2018 collection at PeerJ

Monday, August 13th

08:45-09:00 Session 1: Conference Welcome
09:00-10:00 Session 2: Keynote by David Tarboton, Utah State:
Web Based Hydrologic Terrain Analysis through HydroShare
10:00-11:40 Session 3A: Stream Networks
10:00-10:20 Giuseppe Amatulli, Sami Domisch, Jens Kiesel, Tushar Sethi, Dai Yamazaki and Peter Raymond.
High-resolution stream network delineation using digital elevation models: assessing the spatial accuracy
10:20-10:40 Scott D. Peckham.
Using the Open-source TopoFlow Python Package for Extracting D8-based Grids from DEMs and for Fluvial Landscape Evolution Modeling
10:40-11:00 Qiming Zhou, Fangli Zhang and Liang Cheng.
A Data-driven Method for the Determination of Water-flow Velocity in Watershed Modelling
11:00-11:20 Shangmin Zhao, Shifang Zhang and Weiming Cheng.
Hydrologic application comparison among typical open global DEM data based on remote sensing images
11:20-11:40 Richard Barnes.
RichDEM: High-Performance Terrain Analysis
10:00-17:00 Session 3B: Posters
10:00-17:00 Zhang Jin.
Slope Ranking and geohazards correlation analysis for Combined Open-Underground Mining area
10:00-17:00 Xiaoli Huang and Liyang Xiong.
Space-for-time substitution and the evolution of gully system in a small watershed of the Chinese Loess Plateau
10:00-17:00 Jiaming Na and Guoan Tang.
Simulation on the Evolution of Loess Gullies and Landforms Based on Archaeological Remains Information
10:00-17:00 Jilong Li, Guoan Tang, Fayuan Li and Jianjun Cao.
Delimitation of the transition zone between active and inactive gully erosion in the Chinese Loess Plateau
11:40-12:40 Lunch
12:40-13:30 Session 4: Highlight Paper
12:40-13:00 John Wilson.
Geomorphometry: Today and Tomorrow
13:10-14:50 Session 5: Data resolution and scale
13:10-13:30 Samantha Arundel, Wenwen Li and Xiran Zhou.
The Effect of Resolution on Terrain Feature Extraction
13:30-13:50 Massimiliano Alvioli, Alessandro Cesare Mondini, Federica Fiorucci, Mauro Cardinali and Ivan Marchesini.
Automatic landslide mapping from satellite imagery with a topography-driven thresholding algorithm
13:50-14:10 Flavius Sirbu, Lucian Dragut, Takashi Oguchi, Yuichi Hayakawa and Mihai Micu.
Sensitivity of land-surface variables to scale in identifying landslide scarps
14:10-14:30 Adnane Habib, Kourosh Khoshelham, Nadia Akdim, Fatima-Ezzahra El Ghandour, Kamal Labbassi and Massimo Menenti.
Enhancing DEMs for geomorphometric research through digital filtering
14:30-14:50 Peter Guth.
What Should a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) Portray?
14:50-15:10 Break
15:10-16:10 Session 6: Planetary geomorphometry
15:10-15:30 Weiming Cheng.
A preliminary study of classification method on lunar topography and landforms
15:30-15:50 Yan-Wen Wang, Cheng-Zhi Qin, Wei-Ming Cheng and A-Xing Zhu.
Detecting craters by training random forest based on existing crater map and spatial structural information
15:50-16:10 Tao Liu and Victor Baker.
Hydraulic Modeling of Megaflooding Using Terrestrial and Martian DEMs
16:10-17:10 Session 7: Discussion on non-profit status

Tuesday, August 14th

09:00-16:00 Field trip

Wednesday, August 15th

09:00-10:00 Session 8: Keynote by Dai Yamazaki, The University of Tokyo:
MERIT DEM: a high-accuracy global elevation map by multi-component error removal
 
10:00-11:40 Session 9: Classification of topography  
10:00-10:20 Jozef Minár, Peter Bandura, Lucian Drăguţ, Ian Evans, Michal Gallay, Jaroslav Hofierka, Juraj Holec, Ján Kaňuk and Anton Popov.
Physically-based land surface segmentation: Theoretical background and outline of interpretations
 
10:20-10:40 Massimiliano Alvioli, Ivan Marchesini and Fausto Guzzetti.
Nation-wide, general-purpose delineation of geomorphological slope units in Italy
 
10:40-11:00 Ovidiu Csillik and Lucian Dragut.
Towards a global geomorphometric atlas using Google Earth Engine
 
11:00-11:20 Peter Bandura, Jozef Minár, Lucian Dragut and Miroslav Bielik.
Physically-based segmentation of the Western Carpathians (Central Europe)
 
11:20-11:40 Junko Iwahashi, Takayuki Nakano and Dai Yamazaki.
Classification of topography in artificially modified alluvial plains using DEMs
 
11:40-12:40 Lunch  
12:40-13:30 Session 10: Highlight Paper  
12:40-13:00 Vincent Lecours, Vanessa Lucieer, Margaret Dolan and Aaron Micallef.
Recent and Future Trends in Marine Geomorphometry
 
13:00-14:20 Session 11: Accuracy and Error Propagation  
13:00-13:20 Mehran Ghandehari and Barbara P. Buttenfield.
Slope-Adjusted Surface Area Computations and Error Propagation in Digital Terrain
 
13:20-13:40 Christopher Wecklich, Carolina Gonzalez and Paola Rizzoli.
Height Accuracy and Data Coverage for the Final Global TanDEM-X DEM Data
 
13:40-14:00 Peter Bandura and Michal Gallay.
Validation of TanDEM-X elevation data for a forested karst area in Slovakia (Central Europe)
 
14:00-14:20 Mihai Niculita.
Assessing the accuracy of SRTM altitude data for the hilly area in northeastern Romania
 
14:30-14:50 Break  
14:50-16:10 Session 12: Glacial and Marine Geomorphometry  
14:50-15:10 Mihai Niculita and Ian Evans.
Effects of glaciation on the clinometry and hypsometry of the Romanian Carpathians
 
15:10-15:30 Da Huo, Michael Bishop and Brennan Young.
Geomorphometric assessment of glacier state in the Karakoram, Himalaya
 
15:30-15:50 Kwanmok Kim, Vincent Lecours and Peter C. Frederick.
Using 3D Micro-Geomorphometry to Quantify Interstitial Spaces of an Oyster Cluster
 
15:50-16:10 Nathalie Debese, Jean-José Jacq, Koen Degrendele and Marc Roche.
Toward Reliable Volumetric Monitoring of Sandbanks
 
16:10-17:10 **Session 13: Roundtable **

Thursday, August 16th

09:00-10:00 Session 14: Keynote by Greg Tucker, University of Colorado:
Lidar meets Landlab: using digital topography to test and calibrate long-term erosion models
10:00-11:40 Session 15: DEM surfaces, lidar, and radar
10:00-10:20 Marián Jenčo.
Detection of Degenerate Points on the Surface
10:20-10:40 John Lindsay and Daniel Newman.
Hyper-scale analysis of surface roughness
10:40-11:00 Qiaomei Su, Chenyu Wang, Shangmin Zhao and Jianmin Wang.
Study on fractal dimension of spatial distribution patterns for hidden danger points of geological hazards: taking Huoxi Coalfield of China as an example
11:00-11:20 Francis Rengers and Luke McGuire.
Quantifying Hillslope Erosion with Lidar
11:20-11:40 Nicusor Necula, Mihai Niculita and Mario Floris.
Using Sentinel-1 SAR data to detect earth surface changes related to neotectonics in the Focșani basin (Eastern Romania)
11:40-12:40 Lunch
12:40-13:30 Session 16: Highlight Paper
12:40-13:00 Hannes Isaak Reuter.
Geomorphometry – 10 years after the book – challenges ahead ?
13:10-14:30 Session 17: UAV/SfM I
13:10-13:30 Igor Florinsky, Dmitrii Bliakharskii, Sergey Popov and Sergey Pryakhin.
The 2017 Catastrophic Subsidence in the Dålk Glacier: Unmanned Aerial Survey and Digital Terrain Analysis
13:30-13:50 Michal Gallay, Ján Šašak, Ján Kaňuk, Jozef Šupinský, Jaroslav Hofierka and Jozef Minár.
High-resolution digital terrain modelling of a rugged alpine terrain by fusing data from terrestrial laser scanning and UAV photogrammetry
13:50-14:10 Carlos Grohmann, Camila Viana, Mariana Busarello and Guilherme Garcia.
Structural analysis of clastic dikes based on Structure from Motion/Multi-View Stereo
14:10-14:30 Marek Kasprzak and Mariusz Szymanowski.
Terrain determinants of permafrost active layer thermal conditions: a case study from Arctic non-glaciated catchment (Bratteggdalen, SW Spitsbergen)
14:30-14:50 Break
14:50-15:30 Session 18: UAV/SfM II
14:50-15:10 Alberto Alfonso-Torreño, Álvaro Gómez-Gutiérrez, Susanne Schnabel, José Juan de Sanjosé Blasco and Manuel Sánchez Fernández.
Quantifying sediment volume retained in hydrological correction check dams by means of high-resolution DEMs in a semiarid rangeland of SW Spain
15:10-15:30 Álvaro Gómez-Gutiérrez, Trent Biggs, Napoleon Gudino Elizondo, Paz Errea, Esteban Alonso Gonzalez, Estela Nadal Romero and José Juan de Sanjosé Blasco.
Elaborating more accurate high-resolution DEMs using SfM workflow
15:30-15:50 Session 19: Recent ESRI enhancements in geomorphometry
15:50-16:50 Session 20: Elections, Awards, and Geomorphometry 2020

Friday, August 17th

09:00-12:00 Workshop 21A: Using GDAL and PKTOOLS for Raster Operations
09:00-12:00 Workshop 21B: Processing Large Rasters using Tiling and Parallelization: An R + SAGA GIS + GRASS GIS Tutorial
09:00-12:00 Workshop 21C: A Hands-On Introduction to RiverTools 4.0
09:00-12:00 Workshop 21D: Google Earth Engine for large-scale DEM analysis
12:00-13:00 Lunch for Workshop participants
13:00-16:00 Workshop 22A: Using GDAL and PKTOOLS for Raster Operations Part 2
13:00-16:00 Workshop 22B: Processing Large Rasters using Tiling and Parallelization: An R + SAGA GIS + GRASS GIS Tutorial
13:00-16:00 Workshop 21D: A Hands-On Introduction to RiverTools 4.0
13:00-16:00 Workshop 22D: Google Earth Engine for large-scale DEM analysis

TanDEM-X evaluation for selected Brazilian sites

Github repository containing scripts and associated supplemental material (csv files, etc) for the paper:

Grohmann, C.H. 2018. Evaluation of TanDEM-X DEMs on selected Brazilian sites: comparison with SRTM, ASTER GDEM and ALOS AW3D30 Remote Sensing of Environment, 212C:121-133.
View article at publisher (paywalled): https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.04.043
Open Access preprint (same content as article, different formatting): https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.05016

Link to GitHub repository: https://github.com/CarlosGrohmann/scripts_papers/tree/master/tdx_brazil

In the paper, a first assessment of the TanDEM-X DEMs over Brazilian territory is presented through a comparison with SRTM, ASTER GDEM and ALOS AW3D30 DEMs in seven study areas with distinct geomorphological contexts, vegetation coverage, and land use.

The analyzes were made using GRASS-GIS trough python scripts. Although the DEMs cannot be shared in GitHub (due to both space limitations and licensing of TanDEM-X), the scripts can be used as an educational resource.

Difference between TDX and SRTM for a mining area in southeastern Brazil

TanDEM-X data was provided by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) through an Announcement of Opportunity & Proposal Call (proposal DEM_GEOL0538).

This study was supported by Brazil’s National Council of Scientific and Technological Development, CNPq grant 307647/2015-3, the Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) grant #2016/06628-0, and is co-funded by FAPESP (BIOTA #2012/50260-6, #2013/50297-0),NSF (DEB 1343578), and NASA.

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