PhD Position in Remote Sensing at German Remote Sensing Data Center

PhD Position in Development of a data and product quality assurance framework to quantify land surface parameters based on high resolution optical and SAR imagery at Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; Oberpfaffenhofen

The German Remote Sensing Data Center in Oberpfaffenhofen has a Vacancy for a PhD candidate.

Development of a data and product quality assurance framework to quantify land surface parameters based on high resolution optical and SAR imagery (PhD thesis, duration: 2 years).

Project:
The aim of FP7-project EO-MINERS is to bring into play Earth Observation (EO)-based methods and tools to facilitate and improve interaction between the mineral extractive industry and the society in view of its sustainable development while improving its societal acceptability. Mining companies, regulatory bodies and stakeholders need various EO-based tools and methods adequately tailored to regarding the local contexts and applications (in compliance with GEO and GMES objectives and tasks). A strong RTD component will consist in developing EO-based tools and methodologies to observe and monitor the environmental and societal footprint of extractive industry activities over different demonstration sites located in heavily exploited areas. As the EU is strongly interested in the establishment of measures for raw material flow analysis, especially for imported mineral resources, this project will contribute to the development of measures that can be used to analyze the mining operations taking the individual potential ecological and social footprint into account.

Scope of work:

The PhD research targets to investigate how to apply calibration / validation procedures to assure high-quality EO products. This task strongly requires investigations on data quality, pre-processing routines used as well as data inspection and assimilation. The stages includes: mission planning (sensor selection, spectral configuration, spatial resolution, area coverage), raw data quality assurance (functioning of the sensors during data acquisition), radiometry quality assurance (sensor calibration performances), atmospheric correction quality (reflectance and emissivity extraction), field data quality (reliable and reproducible measurements), standards for field and laboratory measurement, thematic assurance (ground validation), uncertainty estimation (possible errors at each stage plus estimation of the final error budget), follow up feedback from end-users during the project (for fine tuning the process), and dissemination of the protocols and proposed standards. These procedures shall take into account existing guidelines (e.g., QA4EO), and develop a framework tailored for the EO-MINERS requirements.

Essential selection criteria:

1. PhD student satisfy requirements for a PhD in a branch of the earth sciences (geophysics, geomatics) or engineering (electronic, communication or system engineering), research interests and expertise in image processing techniques (optical RS, knowledge about SAR processing would be an asset).
2. Experience with different software platforms and higher level programming languages (e.g. C, C++, IDL) and software packages for statistics applications (e.g. Matlab, R).
3. Evidence of good communication skills, both written and oral and ability to report on research outcomes within agreed deadlines.

Points of contact:

German Remote Sensing Data Center, Land Applications
Dr.-Ing. Christian Fischer, +49 / (0)8153 28 1338, c.fischer@dlr.de
Dr. Martin Bachmann, +49 / (0)8153 28 3325, martin.bachmann@dlr.de