TY - GEN
T1 - The global network of outdoor webcams
T2 - 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2009
AU - Jacobs, Nathan
AU - Burgin, Walker
AU - Fridrich, Nick
AU - Abrams, Austin
AU - Miskell, Kylia
AU - Braswell, Bobby H.
AU - Richardson, Andrew D.
AU - Pless, Robert
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - There are thousands of outdoor webcams which offer live images freely over the Internet. We report on methods for discovering and organizing this already existing and massively distributed global sensor, and argue that it provides an interesting alternative to satellite imagery for global-scale remote sensing applications. In particular, we characterize the live imaging capabilities that are freely available as of the summer of 2009 in terms of the spatial distribution of the cameras, their update rate, and characteristics of the scene in view. We offer algorithms that exploit the fact that webcams are typically static to simplify the tasks of inferring relevant environmental and weather variables directly from image data. Finally, we show that organizing and exploiting the large, ad-hoc, set of cameras attached to the web can dramatically increase the data available for studying particular problems in phenology.
AB - There are thousands of outdoor webcams which offer live images freely over the Internet. We report on methods for discovering and organizing this already existing and massively distributed global sensor, and argue that it provides an interesting alternative to satellite imagery for global-scale remote sensing applications. In particular, we characterize the live imaging capabilities that are freely available as of the summer of 2009 in terms of the spatial distribution of the cameras, their update rate, and characteristics of the scene in view. We offer algorithms that exploit the fact that webcams are typically static to simplify the tasks of inferring relevant environmental and weather variables directly from image data. Finally, we show that organizing and exploiting the large, ad-hoc, set of cameras attached to the web can dramatically increase the data available for studying particular problems in phenology.
KW - Calibration
KW - Camera network
KW - Global
KW - Metadata
KW - Phenology
KW - Webcam
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/74049089036
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/74049089036#tab=citedBy
U2 - 10.1145/1653771.1653789
DO - 10.1145/1653771.1653789
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:74049089036
SN - 9781605586496
T3 - GIS: Proceedings of the ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems
SP - 111
EP - 120
BT - 17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2009
Y2 - 4 November 2009 through 6 November 2009
ER -