Aled Rowlands

Aled Rowlands joined the Environment Systems team in 2006 as Senior GIS and Remote Sensing Consultant.  Although based in the UK, he spends much of his time in continental Europe working on consultancy projects. Having spent much of the last 4 years in Pristina, Kosovo, he now spends most of his time in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As well as promoting the company in continental Europe, Aled provides technical support to various projects across the company through advanced data analysis and programming.  Aled is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth University and is also a Chartered Geographer and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Many of these projects have involved the automatic extraction of features from different types of imagery. These include:

• LUCAS landscape indicators, where, as part of an international consortium, Aled led the technical component on behalf of Environment Systems to develop indicators for landscape characterisation based on data acquired from the DG Eurostat LUCAS survey. This primarily involved the automatic extraction of landscape information from ground survey photographs, including indicators such as landscape homogeneity, complexity of the skyline etc;
• Tweed Habitat Survey, where there was a requirement to automatically extract habitat units from aerial photography. This included automatic extraction of hedges from the imagery;
• Mapping invasive species (e.g. Japanese Knotweed) in South Wales through the use of near infrared aerial photography and LiDAR data.

Aled has delivered seminars to non-expert groups on topics such as "Big Brother in Space" and is involved in the A level geography system in the UK. Aled holds a BSc Hons (First class) in geography from the University of Wales and a D.Phil. in physics from the University of Sussex.