Every year the ISPRS (International Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing) chooses the Best Paper of the Year from the wide range of publications in the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
For 2019, this award goes to the scientific article Design and Evaluation of a Full-Wave Surface and Bottom-Detection Algorithm for LiDAR Bathymetry of Very Shallow Waters by Roland Schwarz, Gottfried Mandlburger, Martin Pfennigbauer and Norbert Pfeifer.
In cooperation with the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Stuttgart, Roland Schwarz and Martin Pfennigbauer from RIEGL Research succeeded in issuing a new and innovative contribution to topographic underwater mapping with the SVB algorithm (surface, volume and bottom) presented in their article. A considerable advantage of their method is that it relies only on a single laser wavelength. The jurors were impressed with the detailed modeling of the return waveform, the clarity of the explanation, the convincing experimental results, and the potential for broader applicability of the method.
The full scientific paper is available under the following link:
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isprsjprs.2019.02.002
(ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume 150, April 2019 pp.1-110)
As Best Paper 2019, the article is automatically nominated for the ISPRS U.V. Helava Award which is awarded every four years, and is selected by a jury of five members with high scientific standing.
RIEGL, an internationally recommended manufacturer of laser scanners for surveying applications with headquarters in Horn/Lower Austria, has always invested massively in research and development. Its own subsidiary, RIEGL Research Gesellschaft mbH, continuously develops groundbreaking innovations in the field of LiDAR technology.
For more than 10 years RIEGL has been intensively involved in the development of topo-bathymetric LiDAR sensors. These systems allow for simultaneous acquisition of measurement data from the environmental topography, the water surface, and the underwater topography.
For applications such as mapping of coastal areas and shallow water zones, surveying for hydraulic engineering, or hydro-archeological missions, RIEGL offers the fully integrated laser scanning system VQ-880-G II and VQ-880-GH (optimized for helicopter use), as well as the compact, lightweight VQ-840-G laser scanner which is also suitable for use on drones.
In addition to these LiDAR sensors, RIEGL's proprietary software package RiHYDRO allows to provide extensive additional information from the bathymetric data by means of Full Waveform Analysis of the digitized echo signals.
