Lecture

Cheminement: Altitude Measurement

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In course

ENV-140: Fundamentals of geomatics

Bases de la géomatique pour les ingénieur·e·s civil et en environnement. Présentation des méthodes d'acquisition, de gestion et de représentation des géodonnées. Apprentissage pratique avec des méthodes topométriques et d'imagerie du territoire. ...

Description

This lecture covers the concept of densifying the altimetric network by measuring height differences between control elevation points, determining point heights, and establishing paths between points to calculate altitudes. The instructor explains how to check for acceptable deviations and use geomatics elements in the process.

Instructors (2)

Pierre-Yves Gilliéron

He graduated in Surveying Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in 1988. He started his professional career in photogrammetry and digital mapping. He joined the Geodetic Eng. Laboratory in 1997 where he worked as research scientist on various navigation and satellite positioning projects. Since 2018 he is deputy head of the section in environmental sciences and engineering at EPFL. -- He was member of the board of the swiss institute of navigation (ION-CH), member of the swiss geodetic committee (SGK) and expert in different committees of the swiss road association (VSS).

Devis Tuia

I come from Ticino and studied in Lausanne, between UNIL and EPFL. After my PhD at UNIL in remote sensing, I was postdoc in Valencia (Spain), Boulder (CO) and EPFL, working on model adaptation and prior knowledge integration in machine learning. In 2014 I became Research Assistant Professor at University of Zurich, where I started the 'multimodal remote sensing' group. In 2017, I joined Wageningen University (NL), where I was professor of the GeoInformation Science and Remote Sensing Laboratory. Since 2020, I joined EPFL Valais, to start the ECEO lab, working at the interface between Earth observation, machine learning and environmental sciences.

Official source

Related concepts (6)

Altitude

Altitude or height is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context (e.g., aviation, geometry, geographical survey, sport, or atmospheric pressure). Although the term altitude is commonly used to mean the height above sea level of a location, in geography the term elevation is often preferred for this usage. Vertical distance measurements in the "down" direction are commonly referred to as depth.

Height

Height is measure of vertical distance, either vertical extent (how "tall" something or someone is) or vertical position (how "high" a point is). For example, "The height of that building is 50 m" or "The height of an airplane in-flight is about 10,000 m". For example, "Christopher Columbus is 5 foot 2 inches in vertical height." When the term is used to describe vertical position (of, e.g., an airplane) from sea level, height is more often called altitude. Furthermore, if the point is attached to the Earth (e.

Geopotential height

Geopotential height or geopotential altitude is a vertical coordinate referenced to Earth's mean sea level (assumed zero potential) that represents the work done by lifting one unit mass one unit distance through a region in which the acceleration of gravity is uniformly 9.80665 m/s2. Geopotential height (altitude) differs from geometric (tapeline) height but remains a historical convention in aeronautics as the altitude used for calibration of aircraft barometric altimeters.

Effects of high altitude on humans

The effects of high altitude on humans are mostly the consequences of reduced partial pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere. The oxygen saturation of hemoglobin determines the content of oxygen in blood. After the human body reaches around above sea level, the saturation of oxyhemoglobin begins to decrease rapidly. However, the human body has both short-term and long-term adaptations to altitude that allow it to partially compensate for the lack of oxygen.

Altimeter

An altimeter or an altitude meter is an instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The measurement of altitude is called altimetry, which is related to the term bathymetry, the measurement of depth under water. In 1931, the US Army Air Corps and General Electric tested a sonic altimeter for aircraft, which was considered more reliable and accurate than one that relied on air pressure when heavy fog or rain was present.

Related lectures (2)

Altitudes Definition and Measurement Principle MOOC: Elements of Geomatics

Explores altitudes definitions, measurement principles, and geomatics elements for accurate height determination using leveling instruments.

Geometric Leveling