Dr. Yosef Akhtman
EPFLTOPO
Switzerland

Biography
Dr. Yosef Akhtman received his BSc degree in Physics and Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel in 2000, and a PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Southampton, UK, in 2007. Between 2006 and 2009 he was a Research Fellow at the Communications Research Group and the Hybrid Optoelectronics Laboratories at the University of Southampton, UK. During this period he was also involved in an award-winning interdisciplinary underwater robotics development project. In 2010 he has taken a position of a Lecturer in Electronics at the University of the West Indies at Cavehill, Barbados, where he pursued his long-standing interest in exploration and conservation of marine ecosystems. His research involved autonomous underwater vehicle-aided exploration, mapping and environmental monitoring of the coastline ecosystems. In 2011, he has joined the Geodetic engineering laboratory at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where his research activities are focused around the development of airborne mapping and remote sensing platforms. In the course of his research career Dr. Akhtman has authored one manuscript, as well as in excess of forty scientific papers.

Abstract
Remote Sensing over Water using Hyperspectral Data Collected with an Ultralight Plane

Since October 2012, the Geodetic Engineering Lab at EPFL has developed and deployed a remote sensing platform optimised for collection of multi- and hyper-spectral observations of both land and water surfaces from an ultra-light motorised aircraft. The platform is comprised of four cameras, auxiliary GNSS position and orientation sensors, as well as data recording equipment. Its development was part of the international Léman-Baikal research project of the Limnology Research Centre of EPFL. During the system development, we have conducted a series of flights in the area of Lake Geneva. Our initial points of interest included the mouths of rivers Venoge and Rhône, which exhibit a particularly rich range of visually observable hydrological phenomena. In June and July 2013, a comprehensive field campaign took place over the delta of river Selenga in Southern Siberia, Russian Federation. Our airborne observations were complemented by extensive groundwork, which included the collection and analysis of in situ samples, as well as the recording of the corresponding spectral reflectance signatures of the water surface. The field campaign resulted in the collection of the total of around 7 Terabytes of airborne remote sensing data covering the area in excess of 1000 km2, including more than 100 sampling sites. We have conducted a range of methodological experiments, while collecting data from different altitudes between 500 and 2500 metres, resulting in the ground resolution for the high-resolution RGB/nIR imagery of approximately 16 to 80 cm per pixel, respectively.