Best Paper Award given to Sandra Jakob of the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology

News published on 31 August 2016

Sandra Jakob of the exploration division of HZDR’s Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology is the recipient of the Best Paper Award given for her lecture at the „8th Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing“; her coauthors are Robert Zimmermann and Dr. Richard Gloaguen.

This year, about 160 researchers participated at the conference which addresses all those using hyperspectral data for their research. The conference took place in Los Angeles from 21 to 24 August 2016.

Hyperspectral and spectral data, respectively, can be used to reveal the characteristics of materials or objects. They are applied for mineral raw material exploration by the Freiberg experts. As the data cameras are increasingly lightweight, the scientists operate them using drones. “Up until now, however, drone-borne data have been primarily used for the analysis of vegetation,” says Sandra Jakob. Thus, targeted farming has been the main field of application so far.

“I have presented a new approach to correct drone-borne data,” explains the young researcher, who is working on her PhD thesis at the HIF. “Until now, there has been hardly any research to use these data in geology because, for this particular application, the data are in need of special correction. We have been able to show for the first time that our approach is suitable to utilize hyperspectral data for geological applications like mineral raw material exploration or mineral resource mapping.

Hyperspectral data have been in the focus of Sandra Jakob’s research since her master thesis at the HIF, which was concerned with the exploration of lead, zinc, and silver ore deposits in Australia. The young scientist studied geo sciences at the TU Bergakademie Freiberg.