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Dissertation of the Hamburg University, Department of Geosciences. The research presented in this thesis was conducted at the International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC), P.O. Box 6, 7500 AA, Enschede, The Netherlands.

Keywords:

humanitarian demining, landmines, minefields, level 1-2 and 3 surveys, suspect areas, area reduction, minefield boundary, input- process-outcome and impact indicators, remote sensing, airborne surveys, multisensor, aerial photographs, satellite images, image fusion, photointerpretation, image enhancement, multi-temporal image analysis, change detection

Summary (extracted from the thesis` summary):

In this thesis, standoff detection from air and spaceborne platforms was attempted, under test and real conditions. The results obtained show that standoff detection can assist in the (difficult and dangerous) field-based humanitarian demining efforts.

... Air and spaceborne remote sensing techniques, which have previously been applied to other problems, can now be adapted and customized to the problem of identification of suspect areas and minefield detection. The main objective of this research was to evaluate the use of space and airborne remote sensing as a wide area standoff detection technique for humanitarian demining purposes, especially the potential to assist in conventional level 1 and level 2 surveys.

... The final chapter discusses the results obtained from this research. In this thesis the use of space and airborne remote sensing as a wide area detection technique to contribute to the humanitarian demining process was evaluated for a number of pilot areas. The identification of suitable direct and indirect image indicators, in combination with collected ancillary information, prior knowledge/intelligence, etc., provided major keys towards the successful identification and detection of suspect areas and minefields using standoff detection techniques.

Alternative link: http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?idn=964432943.