Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen i Kulturvård, Landskapsvårdens hantverk 15 hp, 2013.

The usage of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for several applications has in-creased during the past years. One of the possible applications are aerial imagecapturing for detection and surveillance purposes. In order to make the captur-ing process more efficient, multiple, cameraequipped UAV:s could fly in a for-mation and as a result cover a larger area. To be able to receive several imagesequences and stitch those together, resulting in a panoramavideo, a softwareapplication has been developed and tested for this purpose.All functionality are developed in the language C++ by using the software li-brary OpenCV. All implementations of different techniques and methods hasbeen done as generic as possible to be able to add functionality in the future.Common methods in computervision and object recognition such as SIFT, SURF and RANSAC have been tested..

During the past years fire has been identified as an important factor for nature conservation in the forest landscape. To accurately quantify the size of a burnt area is obviously important, but also to quantify the degree of fire damage to the tree canopy. Such data are important for assessing the conservation value, and to support planning and management of the burned area in the future. I have examined how to estimate the status of tree crowns after fire from interpretation of aerial photographs. This is possible because fire changes the structure of tree crowns and this influences the colours in aerial photographs by spectral reflection. Included in the study are four areas, three of which burned in 2005 and one in 2006.

SCA Skog has taken the initiative to this Master?s thesis. Today SCA Skog has a great need to update their informtion on young forest stands across large areas. Traditional field inventory methods for updating stand databases are expensive and time consuming. However, the inventory could be made more efficient if stand boundaries and stand characteristics are derived from aerial photographs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether it is possible for SCA to update their stand register with use of digital aerial photos photographed with a Zeiss/Intergraph DMC. ?Updating? in this study implies the delineation of stands and estimating stand variables such as average stand height, volume density, stand volume, and tree species composition in order to identify stands which can be of current interest for thinning. The study also includes how the aerial photo material and experience of the interpreter can influence the quality of the interpreted variables. The aerial photo interpretations were made by both experienced and inexperienced interpreters.

This thesis has been written at Linköping University for the company Instrument Control Sweden AB (ICS).ICS is a small company located in Linköping that develops software and hardware for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, UAV. At present, ICS has a fully functional autopilot called EasyPilot but they want to reduce the autopilot?s size to make it more attractive.The purpose of this thesis was to investigate if it was possible to reduce the size of the autopilot and how, in that case, it would be done. It was also necessary to examine whether the old processors should be replaced by new ones and how hard it would be to convert the old software to these new processors.To succeed with the goals many of the old components had to be changed for new, smaller ones. Some less necessary parts were also completely removed.

This report is an assessment of the feasibility of using aerial photographs to estimate number of stems per hectare in young forest stands, used together with upper height to determine the need for pre-commercial thinning or ordinary thinning cutting. Aerial photo-interpretation was conducted in 2007 on assignment of Stora Enso Skog AB. A mean height function based on stand age produced with data from Bergvik Skog AB?s 2006 forest inventory assessment was used as a proxy for upper height and used together with photo-interpreted number of stems per hectare to determine the need for thinning cutting according to Bergvik Skog AB?s definitions. The test area is located north of Falun on Bergvik Skog AB?s land.Flight altitude was approximately 900 m above ground and the aerial photos were taken by L&L Flygbildteknik AB.

At present day there are several different methods for measuring of paved surfaces.The most common methods today are measuring with a total station, the GlobalNavigation Satellite System (GNSS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). Recently thedevelopment of unmanned aerial vehicles, known as drones, has increasedexponentially and today there are several ways of using drones for measuring surfacesby photographing and laser scanning.This thesis contains a comparison between the methods terrestrial laser scanning(TLS), and unmanned aerial vehicle photogrammetry (UAV). The measurements havebeen applied on two different test surfaces, one of asphalt and one of gravel. Thepurpose of the comparison is to investigate whether the airborne photogrammetry isequivalent accurate in its height levels as the terrestrial laser scanning. For thecomparison to be more extensive, these two methods have not only been comparedin precision but also in the areas of ease of use and economy.The precision was analyzed by comparing the height levels in randomly placed controlpoints on the test surfaces.

This study was carried out as a commission from Holmen Skog, district ?Egen skog? in Norrköping. During October 2006 several stands were inventoried by aerial photos from helicopter. The stands were those for which the next action proposed was plant inventory or plant check. The photos were interpreted and the number of stems was calculated.

When are aerial bombing strategies effective in coercing target states? According to the recent research debate there is a consensus that denial strategies may be an effective instrument for coercing states to change their politics. This study is based on Belkin?s theory which argues that the effectiveness of denial strategies may depend in part on the domestic legitimacy of the target states? regimes. From a political standpoint, aerial denial effectiveness can be considered more likely to coerce when political leaders of target states lack domestic legitimacy rather than when they are legitimate.   The purpose of this study is to contribute an explanation of a condition where denial strategies are more likely to succeed.

Today Holmen Skog finds and selects suitable thinning stands using data on upper height and basal area. These figures are often based on basic forest data that has been updated with the help of growth prediction models. The problem is that these figures are not always correct. The aim of this study was to investigate if a combination of data from a profiling laser and a digital camera for low elevation photography, can be used for collecting data on number of stems per ha, tree species mixture as well as basal area weighted mean height and upper height for stands. The possibility to use these data to assess the need for thinning cutting was also investigated.Laser data and aerial photographs were collected from a helicopter operating at an approximate height of 100 meters.

Nya typer av krigföring, så som COIN-operationer (Counter insurgency), ställer nya krav på flygstridskrafterna. Utvecklingen av det bemannade stridsflyget har, om man jämför med UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), trots detta stått relativt stilla. Obemannat stridsflyg har samtidigt utvecklat förmågor som gör funktionen till en värdig konkurrent på det moderna slagfältet. Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka huruvida obemannat stridsflyg kan överta det bemannade stridsflygets plats inom ramen för COIN-operationer. Detta avser jag uppnå genom att undersöka hur väl de båda funktionerna svarar uppmot de krav som ställs på ett stridsflygplan i en operation med inslag av COIN.

During 2012, the employer of this essay carried out a telephone survey with 18000 participants and a web panel survey with 708 participants. Those who partook in the telephone survey were given a choice to join the web panel. The purpose of this work is to study the participants of the telephone survey and see if they reflect the Swedish population with regards to several socio-demographic factors. Also, we intend to investigate if the propensity to join the web panel differs for participants of the telephone survey with regards to various socio-demographic affiliations. It is also of interest to study if the response pattern is different for participants of the telephone survey that would like to join the web panel and those who reject.

En karta är en färskvara som är i ständigt behov av ajourhållning. Ajourhållning görs normalt med traditionella metoder: fotogrammetriska och/eller geodetiska. Men i och med att utvecklingen går framåt har intresset för en ny metod, UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), ökat. UAS är en relativt ny fotogrammetrisk metod där obemannade flygfarkoster används. Detta examensarbete har utvärderat vilken osäkerhet vanligt förekommande detaljer i en karta kan få i framställda "produkter" som genererats med hjälp av UAS-bilder som georefererats med naturliga stödpunkter.

The development in photogrammetry has created possibilities for new methods in aerial images acquisition. Remotely-controlled imaging from an unmanned helium zeppelin is a new and relatively unexplored acquisition. The purpose with this degree project is to evaluate the accuracy of this kind of low-height photographing system, a task given from the consultant company WSP, in Sweden. Landbadet in Uddevalla municipality was chosen as a test field for the zeppelin. Seventeen images distributed over three strips were acquired from the flying height of 80 m.