Affordable prices for 3D laser range finders and mature software solutions for registering multiple point clouds in a common coordinate system paved the way for new areas of application for 3D point clouds. Nowadays we see 3D laser scanners being used not only by digital surveying experts but also by law enforcement officials, construction workers or archaeologists. Whether the purpose is digitizing factory production lines, preserving historic sites as digital heritage or recording environments for gaming or virtual reality applications -- it is hard to imagine a scenario in which the final point cloud must also contain the points of "moving" objects like factory workers, pedestrians, cars or flocks of birds. For most post-processing tasks, moving objects are undesirable not least because moving objects will appear in scans multiple times or are distorted due to their motion relative to the scanner rotation. The main contributions of this work are two postprocessing steps for already registered 3D point clouds. The first method is a new change detection approach based on a voxel grid which allows partitioning the input points into static and dynamic points using explicit change detection and subsequently remove the latter for a "cleaned" point cloud. The second method uses this cleaned point cloud as input for detecting collisions between points of the environment point cloud and a point cloud of a model that is moved through the scene. Our approach on explicit change detection is compared to the state of the art using multiple datasets including the popular KITTI dataset. We show how our solution achieves similar or better F1-scores than an existing solution while at the same time being faster. To detect collisions we do not produce a mesh but approximate the raw point cloud data by spheres or cylindrical volumes. We show how our data structures allow efficient nearest neighbor queries that make our CPU-only approach comparable to a massively-parallel algorithm running on a GPU. The utilized algorithms and data structures are discussed in detail. All our software is freely available for download under the terms of the GNU General Public license. Most of the datasets used in this thesis are freely available as well. We provide shell scripts that allow one to directly reproduce the quantitative results shown in this thesis for easy verification of our findings. / Kostengünstige Laserscanner und ausgereifte Softwarelösungen um mehrere Punktwolken in einem gemeinsamen Koordinatensystem zu registrieren, ermöglichen neue Einsatzzwecke für 3D Punktwolken. Heutzutage werden 3D Laserscanner nicht nur von Expert*innen auf dem Gebiet der Vermessung genutzt sondern auch von Polizist*innen, Bauarbeiter*innen oder Archäolog*innen. Unabhängig davon ob der Einsatzzweck die Digitalisierung von Fabrikanlagen, der Erhalt von historischen Stätten als digitaler Nachlass oder die Erfassung einer Umgebung für Virtual Reality Anwendungen ist - es ist schwer ein Szenario zu finden in welchem die finale Punktwolke auch Punkte von sich bewegenden Objekten enthalten soll, wie zum Beispiel Fabrikarbeiter*innen, Passant*innen, Autos oder einen Schwarm Vögel. In den meisten Bearbeitungsschritten sind bewegte Objekte unerwünscht und das nicht nur weil sie in mehrmals im gleichen Scan vorkommen oder auf Grund ihrer Bewegung relativ zur Scanner Rotation verzerrt gemessen werden. Der Hauptbeitrag dieser Arbeit sind zwei Nachverarbeitungsschritte für registrierte 3D Punktwolken. Die erste Methode ist ein neuer Ansatz zur Änderungserkennung basierend auf einem Voxelgitter, welche es erlaubt die Eingabepunktwolke in statische und dynamische Punkte zu segmentieren. Die zweite Methode nutzt die gesäuberte Punktwolke als Eingabe um Kollisionen zwischen Punkten der Umgebung mit der Punktwolke eines Modells welches durch die Szene bewegt wird zu erkennen. Unser Vorgehen für explizite Änderungserkennung wird mit dem aktuellen Stand der Technik unter Verwendung verschiedener Datensätze verglichen, inklusive dem populären KITTI Datensatz. Wir zeigen, dass unsere Lösung ähnliche oder bessere F1-Werte als existierende Lösungen erreicht und gleichzeitig schneller ist. Um Kollisionen zu finden erstellen wir kein Polygonnetz sondern approximieren die Punkte mit Kugeln oder zylindrischen Volumen. Wir zeigen wie unsere Datenstrukturen effiziente Nächste-Nachbarn-Suche erlaubt, die unsere CPU Lösung mit einer massiv-parallelen Lösung für die GPU vergleichbar macht. Die benutzten Algorithmen und Datenstrukturen werden im Detail diskutiert. Die komplette Software ist frei verfügbar unter den Bedingungen der GNU General Public license. Die meisten unserer Datensätze die in dieser Arbeit verwendet wurden stehen ebenfalls zum freien Download zur Verfügung. Wir publizieren ebenfalls all unsere Shell-Skripte mit denen die quantitativen Ergebnisse die in dieser Arbeit gezeigt werden reproduziert und verifiziert werden können.

Risks and uncertainties are unavoidable in agriculture in Sudan, due to its dependence on climatic factors and to the imperfect nature of the agricultural decisions and policies attributed to land cover and land use changes that occur. The current study was conducted in the Gash Agricultural Scheme (GAS) - Kassala State, as a semi-arid land in eastern Sudan. The scheme has been established to contribute to the rural development, to help stability of the nomadic population in eastern Sudan, particularly the local population around the Gash river areas, and to facilitate utilizing the river flood in growing cotton and other cash crops. In the last decade, the scheme production has declined, because of drought periods, which hit the region, sand invasion and the spread of invasive mesquite trees, in addition to administrative negligence. These have resulted also in poor agricultural productivity and the displacement of farmers away from the scheme area. Recently, the scheme is heavily disturbed by human intervention in many aspects. Consequently, resources of cultivated land have shrunk and declined during the period of the study, which in turn have led to dissatisfaction and increasing failure of satisfying increasing farmer’s income and demand for local consumption. Remote sensing applications and geospatial techniques have played a key role in studying different types of hazards whether they are natural or manmade. Multi-temporal satellite data combined with ancillary data were used to monitor, analyze and to assess land use and land cover (LULC) changes and the impact of land degradation on the scheme production, which provides the managers and decision makers with current and improved data for the purposes of proper administration of natural resources in the GAS. Information about patterns of LULC changes through time in the GAS is not only important for the management and planning, but also for a better understanding of human dimensions of environmental changes at regional scale. This study attempts to map and assess the impacts of LULC change and land degradation in GAS during a period of 38 years from 1972-2010. Dry season multi-temporal satellite imagery collected by different sensor systems was selected such as three cloud-free Landsat (MSS 1972, TM 1987 and ETM+ 1999) and ASTER (2010) satellite imagery. This imagery was geo-referenced and radiometrically and atmospherically calibrated using dark object subtraction (DOS). Two approaches of classification (object-oriented and pixel-based) were applied for classification and comparison of LULC. In addition, the study compares between the two approaches to determine which one is more compatible for classification of LULC of the GAS. The pixel-based approach performed slightly better than the object-oriented approach in the classification of LULC in the study area. Application of multi-temporal remote sensing data proved to be successful for the identification and mapping of LULC into five main classes as follows: woodland dominated by dense mesquite trees, grass and shrubs dominated by less dense mesquite trees, bare and cultivated land, stabilized fine sand and mobile sand. After image enhancement successful classification of imagery was achieved using pixel and object based approaches as well as subsequent change detection (image differencing and change matrix), supported by classification accuracy assessments and post-classification. Comparison of LULC changes shows that the land cover of GAS has changed dramatically during the investigated period. It has been discovered that more significant of LULC change processes occurred during the second studied period (1987 to 1999) than during the first period (1972-1987). In the second period nearly half of bare and cultivated lands was changed from 41372.74 ha (20.22 %) in 1987 to 28020.80 ha (13.60 %) in 1999, which was mainly due to the drought that hit the region during the mentioned period. However, the results revealed a drastic loss of bare and cultivated land, equivalent to more than 40% during the entire period (1972-2010). Throughout the whole period of study, drought and invasion of both mesquite trees and sand were responsible for the loss of more than 40% of the total productive lands. Change vector analysis (CVA) as a useful approach was applied for estimating change detection in both magnitude and direction of change. The promising approach of multivariate alteration detection (MAD) and subsequent maximum autocorrelation factor (MAD/MAF) transformation was used to support change detection via assessment of maximum correlation between the transformed variates and the specific original image bands related to specific land cover classes. However, both CVA and MAD/MAD strongly prove the fact that bare and cultivated land have dramatically changed and decreased continuously during the studied period. Both CVA and MAD/MAD demonstrate adequate potentials for monitoring, detecting, identifying and mapping the changes. Moreover, this research demonstrated that CVA and MAD/MAF are superior in providing qualitative details about the nature of all kinds of change. Vegetation indices (VI) such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), modified adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI) and grain soil index (GSI) were applied to measure the quantitative characterization of temporal and spatial vegetation cover patterns and change. All indices remain very sensitive to structure variation of LULC. The results reveal that the NDVI is more effective for detecting the amount and status of the vegetation cover in the study area than SAVI, MSAVI and GSI. Therefore, it can be stated that NDVI can be used as a response variable to identify drought disturbance and land degradation in semi-arid land such as the GAS area. Results of detecting vegetation cover observed by using SAVI were found to be more reasonable than using MSAVI, although MSAVI reduces the background of bare soil better than SAVI. GSI proves high efficiency in determining the different types of surface soils, and producing a change map of top soil grain size, which is useful in assessment of land degradation in the study area. The linkage between socio-economic data and remotely sensed data was applied to determine the relationships between the different factors derived and to analyze the reasons for change in LULC and land degradation and its effects in the study area. The results indicate a strong relationship between LULC derived from remotely sensed data and the influencing socioeconomic variables. The results obtained from analyzing socioeconomic data confirm the findings of remote sensing data analysis, which assure that the decline and degradation of agricultural land is a result of further spread of mesquite trees and of increased invasion of sand during the study period. High livestock density and overgrazing, drought, invasion of sand, spread of invasive mesquite trees, overexploitation of land, improper management, and population growth were considered as the main direct factors responsible for degradation in the study area.

Risks and uncertainties are unavoidable in agriculture in Sudan, due to its dependence on climatic factors and to the imperfect nature of the agricultural decisions and policies attributed to land cover and land use changes that occur. The current study was conducted in the Gash Agricultural Scheme (GAS) - Kassala State, as a semi-arid land in eastern Sudan. The scheme has been established to contribute to the rural development, to help stability of the nomadic population in eastern Sudan, particularly the local population around the Gash river areas, and to facilitate utilizing the river flood in growing cotton and other cash crops. In the last decade, the scheme production has declined, because of drought periods, which hit the region, sand invasion and the spread of invasive mesquite trees, in addition to administrative negligence. These have resulted also in poor agricultural productivity and the displacement of farmers away from the scheme area. Recently, the scheme is heavily disturbed by human intervention in many aspects. Consequently, resources of cultivated land have shrunk and declined during the period of the study, which in turn have led to dissatisfaction and increasing failure of satisfying increasing farmer’s income and demand for local consumption. Remote sensing applications and geospatial techniques have played a key role in studying different types of hazards whether they are natural or manmade. Multi-temporal satellite data combined with ancillary data were used to monitor, analyze and to assess land use and land cover (LULC) changes and the impact of land degradation on the scheme production, which provides the managers and decision makers with current and improved data for the purposes of proper administration of natural resources in the GAS. Information about patterns of LULC changes through time in the GAS is not only important for the management and planning, but also for a better understanding of human dimensions of environmental changes at regional scale. This study attempts to map and assess the impacts of LULC change and land degradation in GAS during a period of 38 years from 1972-2010. Dry season multi-temporal satellite imagery collected by different sensor systems was selected such as three cloud-free Landsat (MSS 1972, TM 1987 and ETM+ 1999) and ASTER (2010) satellite imagery. This imagery was geo-referenced and radiometrically and atmospherically calibrated using dark object subtraction (DOS). Two approaches of classification (object-oriented and pixel-based) were applied for classification and comparison of LULC. In addition, the study compares between the two approaches to determine which one is more compatible for classification of LULC of the GAS. The pixel-based approach performed slightly better than the object-oriented approach in the classification of LULC in the study area. Application of multi-temporal remote sensing data proved to be successful for the identification and mapping of LULC into five main classes as follows: woodland dominated by dense mesquite trees, grass and shrubs dominated by less dense mesquite trees, bare and cultivated land, stabilized fine sand and mobile sand. After image enhancement successful classification of imagery was achieved using pixel and object based approaches as well as subsequent change detection (image differencing and change matrix), supported by classification accuracy assessments and post-classification. Comparison of LULC changes shows that the land cover of GAS has changed dramatically during the investigated period. It has been discovered that more significant of LULC change processes occurred during the second studied period (1987 to 1999) than during the first period (1972-1987). In the second period nearly half of bare and cultivated lands was changed from 41372.74 ha (20.22 %) in 1987 to 28020.80 ha (13.60 %) in 1999, which was mainly due to the drought that hit the region during the mentioned period. However, the results revealed a drastic loss of bare and cultivated land, equivalent to more than 40% during the entire period (1972-2010). Throughout the whole period of study, drought and invasion of both mesquite trees and sand were responsible for the loss of more than 40% of the total productive lands. Change vector analysis (CVA) as a useful approach was applied for estimating change detection in both magnitude and direction of change. The promising approach of multivariate alteration detection (MAD) and subsequent maximum autocorrelation factor (MAD/MAF) transformation was used to support change detection via assessment of maximum correlation between the transformed variates and the specific original image bands related to specific land cover classes. However, both CVA and MAD/MAD strongly prove the fact that bare and cultivated land have dramatically changed and decreased continuously during the studied period. Both CVA and MAD/MAD demonstrate adequate potentials for monitoring, detecting, identifying and mapping the changes. Moreover, this research demonstrated that CVA and MAD/MAF are superior in providing qualitative details about the nature of all kinds of change. Vegetation indices (VI) such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), soil-adjusted vegetation index (SAVI), modified adjusted vegetation index (MSAVI) and grain soil index (GSI) were applied to measure the quantitative characterization of temporal and spatial vegetation cover patterns and change. All indices remain very sensitive to structure variation of LULC. The results reveal that the NDVI is more effective for detecting the amount and status of the vegetation cover in the study area than SAVI, MSAVI and GSI. Therefore, it can be stated that NDVI can be used as a response variable to identify drought disturbance and land degradation in semi-arid land such as the GAS area. Results of detecting vegetation cover observed by using SAVI were found to be more reasonable than using MSAVI, although MSAVI reduces the background of bare soil better than SAVI. GSI proves high efficiency in determining the different types of surface soils, and producing a change map of top soil grain size, which is useful in assessment of land degradation in the study area. The linkage between socio-economic data and remotely sensed data was applied to determine the relationships between the different factors derived and to analyze the reasons for change in LULC and land degradation and its effects in the study area. The results indicate a strong relationship between LULC derived from remotely sensed data and the influencing socioeconomic variables. The results obtained from analyzing socioeconomic data confirm the findings of remote sensing data analysis, which assure that the decline and degradation of agricultural land is a result of further spread of mesquite trees and of increased invasion of sand during the study period. High livestock density and overgrazing, drought, invasion of sand, spread of invasive mesquite trees, overexploitation of land, improper management, and population growth were considered as the main direct factors responsible for degradation in the study area.

Städte sind Brennpunkte des globalen Wandels. Daher sind hochdetaillierte und aktuelle Informationen über deren Entwicklung nötig, wofür moderne Erdbeobachtungssensoren eine ideale Datenbasis liefern. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird ein Verfahren zur Änderungserkennung auf Basis höchstaufgelöster optischer Aufnahmen entwickelt und anschließend im stadtgeographischen Kontext zur Bewertung einer potenziell vorliegenden Geisterstadt angewandt. Das unüberwachte objektbasierte Verfahren erfasst den Bau neuer Gebäude mit einer Genauigkeit von 0,8 bis 0,9 entsprechend der Kappa Statistik in einem Testgebiet in der chinesischen Stadt Dongying. Dabei werden Differenzmerkmale auf Basis vorhandener Gebäudegeometrien zur Änderungserkennung verwendet. Ein Vorteil des Ansatzes ist die Nutzung verschiedener Sensoren mit unterschiedlichen Aufnahmegeometrien, was die Verwertung des gesamten Datenbestandes aktueller und zukünftig verfügbarer höchstaufgelöster Satellitenbilddaten auf kleinen räumlichen Skalen ermöglicht. Die Übertragbarkeit des Ansatzes wird mit besonderem Augenmerk auf die Klassenverteilung untersucht. Zu diesem Zweck wird ein Rahmenwerk entwickelt und in zwei Städten unterschiedlicher Charakteristika angewandt. Dabei zeigen sich geringere Genauigkeiten bei ungleich verteilten Klassen im Gegensatz zu einer ausgewogenen Verteilung. Die Bewertung potenziell vorliegender Geisterstädte wird als exemplarische stadtgeographische Anwendung am Beispiel der chinesischen Stadt Dongying gezeigt. Das Bewertungskonzept basiert auf der Annahme, dass eine geringe Auslastung des verfügbaren Wohnraums eines der wichtigsten Merkmale einer Geisterstadt darstellt. Dazu wird ein funktionales 4D-Stadtmodell zur Abschätzung der Bevölkerungskapazität erstellt und anschließend mit der tatsächlichen permanenten Wohnbevölkerung aus Zensusdaten verglichen. Aufgrund signifikanter Unterschiede ergibt sich eine hohe Wahrscheinlichkeit für die Entstehung einer Geisterstadt in der Stadt Dongying. / Cities are hot spots of global change. Thus, highly detailed and up-to-date information is required, which can be delineated based on various earth observation sensors. This thesis aims at the development of a change detection approach based on very high resolution (VHR) optical remote sensing data and consequent exemplary application of the assessment of the ghost city phenomenon in the context of urban geography. The unsupervised object-based change detection method captures the construction of individual buildings with accuracy of 0.8 to 0.9 according to kappa statistics in the city of Dongying, China. The methodology utilizes object-based difference features based on existing building geometries for the delimitation of changed and unchanged buildings. It is capable of handling VHR data from different sensors with deviating viewing geometries which allows the utilization of all present and future available sources of VHR data at small spatial scale. The transferability of the approach is investigated with particular focus on the nature and effects of class distribution. For this purpose, a diagnostic framework is developed and consequently applied in two cities of different characteristics. Results showed that situations of imbalanced class distribution generally provide less reliable identification of changes compared to balanced situations. The assessment of the ghost city phenomenon is conducted as an exemplary application of urban geography in the city of Dongying, China. The conceptual framework replicates undercapacity with respect to the residential population as one of the key characteristics of a ghost city. A 4d functional city model is established based on VHR imagery for population capacity estimation of residential buildings and subsequently related to actual permanent residential population from census counts. A significant mismatch and thus, high likelihood for the emergence and presence of the ghost city phenomenon was found in Dongying.