Fundamental Study on Ground-Based Sensor Integration for Spatial Data Acquisition 
Mitsunori YOSHIMURA 
Center for Southeast Asian Studies 
Kyoto University 
Japan 
yosh@cseas. kyoto-u. ac. j p 
Tetsuji ANAI, Hirofumi CHIKATSU 
Department of Civil Engineering 
Tokyo Denki University 
Ryosuke SHIBASAKI 
Center for Spatial Information Science 
University of Tokyo 
KEY WORDS: Ground-based Sensor Integration, Spatial Data, Field-level Observation 
ABSTRACT 
Recent several years, Photogrammetry, GPS and their related technologies have been advanced. These technologies can be 
integrated under GIS. However GIS has an unsolved problem how cost-effective and accurate geo-data can generate. Here spatial 
information is defined as land use distribution in spatial dimension. 
According to the mentioned background, the authors developed a spatial data acquisition tool by combining ground-based 
sensors as basic components. All of instruments are connected with note type PC in order to control the operations and exchange 
measured data. This tool is supposed to be used mainly in field-level observations. Accordingly from the point of their volumes, weights 
and what kind of electric power source is used, all of components were selected. 
Our final goal is to identify the both of specific land cover condition and distribution as three-dimensional data. Three- 
dimensional measurement can be introduced by close-range Photogrammetry. Furthermore obtained information is used as one ground 
truth data in spatial analysis. 
In order to estimate background data with sufficient accuracy for used camera calibration, Lab-level experiments were 
conducted. Through its experiments, inner orientation parameters have obtained. GPS and 3D sensor could be confirmed to have enough 
capabilities for providing external orientation parameters. As the future studies, the authors are planning to verify the developed system 
potential as a tool for spatial data acquisition through an actual field-level observation. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
1.1 Why Spatial Data needed? 
GIS related technologies, 1) Spatial Positioning, 2) Network 
Technology and 3) Remote Sensing have been advanced since 
recent years. They are becoming integrated, resulting in the 
tremendous expansion and rapid growth of these markets. 
However • the spatial data acquisition and its database 
construction are most of bottleneck problems in GIS. If some of 
them can be improved, total volume of actual research work 
should decrease and as its result, most of GIS investigation can 
extend to larger regions and longer time period than the previous. 
On the other hand, at the most of GIS, Remote Sensing and its 
related projects, all of used spatial and statistical data must be 
gathered and constructed as the preliminary stage. At actual 
foreign project, it is difficult to obtain existing detail maps or 
some other spatial materials by us. Especially in developing 
countries such as Asian or Africa regions, even if they are 
available, most of them are subject to restriction by government. 
Moreover times and opportunities to investigate them actually 
are limited. Accordingly the authors reached to the decision that 
we have to develop the spatial data acquisition tool by ourselves. 
Multi-ground-based sensors that we suppose Video, GPS and 
3D sensor, can be mounted on various platforms. Most common 
platform is land-based vehicles and sometimes hand-carried by 
individual surveyor. Accordingly vehicle or surveyor becomes a 
potential data collectors. 
1.2 Our Goals of Development 
So far as this moment, photographs are given us good 
impression with location and actual phenomena at each observed 
point. However view photos can not used for measurement of the 
area where some phenomena occurred. 
Our developed concepts are supposed to be used in both fixed- 
point and moving field observations and to identify 1) When, 2) 
Where 3) What, 4) How many area for the specific land condition. 
Their target area is Kuba National Park and its surrounding 
regions in Sarawak, Malaysia. 
The fixed-point observation is aimed to the total observation 
system for forest ecosystem. Here daily forest condition is 
obtained as the image by automatic camera system that put on the 
forest monitoring tower crane with 80m height. Also this imagery 
is used for the measurement or monitoring of the forest condition 
by combining with observed other physical data such as climate