IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2014 - 38

The data of the 2014 Contest will remain available to the GRSS community. A
copy can be requested directly to Telops Inc. (contact@telops.com).
The test set has also been disclosed and can be used for comparison with
the results published on the Contest website. The data are usable free of charge
for scientific purposes, but the Contest Terms and Conditions on the Contest
Webpage (http://cucciolo.dibe.unige.it/IPRS/IEEE_GRSS_IADFTC_2014_Data_
Fusion_Contest.htm) remain applicable. Please read them carefully.

You can contact the Committee Chairs by e-mail at: dftc@ieee.org.
If you are interested in joining the Image Analysis and Data Fusion
Technical Committee, please send an e-mail with:
◗◗ First and Last Name
◗◗ Institution/Company
◗◗ Country
◗◗ IEEE Membership Number (if available)
◗◗ E-mail.
Members receive information regarding research and applications on image
analysis and data fusion topics, and updates on the annual Data Fusion Contest
and on the other activities of the IADF TC. Membership in the IADF TC is free!
Join the LinkedIn IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Discussion Forum: http://www.
linkedin.com/groups/IEEE-GRSS-Data-Fusion-Discussion-3678437.

In the second step, the full dataset was made available
and participants had a limited time (two weeks, see Fig.
2) to use their models to predict the ensemble of the
newly acquired multimodal dataset. This way, efficiencies of the algorithms, not only their accuracies, were also
tested. Test samples were not disclosed to the participants
during the second phase.

TIR

II. OUTCOME OF THE CONTESTS
The dataset of the Contest was downloaded by over 480
teams from universities, national laboratories, space agencies, and corporations worldwide. This confirms that data
fusion is a topic that reaches beyond academia and has
a real impact on data providers and space practitioners.
Teams from 50 countries, whose geographic distribution
is reported in Fig. 3, downloaded the data. The outcome
was announced and awarded at the 2014 IEEE Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2014) in Québec City, Canada. The winners were:

VIS
Deadline for the Classification Contest:
Submission of a Classification Map at
20 cm.

Release of the Full Data Set and
Opening of Both Competitions.
4 Weeks
Jan 22,
2014

Feb 19,
2014

VIS

Award Ceremony
During the TC/CC
Dinner.

2 Weeks

Release of a Subset of the Data,
Including a Training Map.
TIR

The Paper Contest had the objective of promoting new
methodologies for the fusion of VHR color and thermal
hyperspectral data. Each participant submitted a 4-page
paper describing the addressed problem, the methodology, and the results obtained. The topic of the manuscript
in the data fusion area was totally open and participants
were encouraged to tackle open problems in multisensor
and/or multiresolution data processing, as well as in the
analysis of thermal hyperspectral imagery. Papers were
evaluated by eight experts from universities and industry:
◗◗ Jon A. Benediktsson, University of Iceland (Iceland)
◗◗ Martin Chamberland, Telops Inc., Québec (Canada)
◗◗ Jenny Q. Du, Mississippi State University (USA)
◗◗ Paolo Gamba, University of Pavia (Italy)
◗◗ Gabriele Moser, University of Genoa (Italy)
◗◗ Fabio Pacifici, DigitalGlobe Inc. (USA)
◗◗ Michal Shimoni, Royal Military Academy (Belgium)
◗◗ Devis Tuia, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(Switzerland).
Papers were judged in terms of sound scientific value,
novel contribution, methodology, validation, and quality
of the presentation.

Training

Mar 5,
2014

Jun 15,
2014

IGARSS
2014

Deadline for the Paper Contest:
Submission of a Paper (IGARSS Format) on
a Free Topic Involving the Data Provided.

FIgUrE 2. Timeline of the 2014 Data Fusion Contest.

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

september 2014

http://cucciolo.dibe.unige.it/IPRS/IEEE_GRSS_IADFTC_2014_Data_ http://www http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IEEE-GRSS-Data-Fusion-Discussion-3678437

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2014