| Postgraduate
Projects |
|
Enobong Bassey,
graduated with a Master of Science degree in Petroleum
Engineering, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, after obtaining his
Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering. He will be
developing a novel set of chemical sensors or "e-nose" in short, for
analysing grapevine and wine taste for a wider project called
"Eno-Humans". The aim is to building models to analyse and predict
climate change effects in weather conditions and on wine quality.
Project: Characterisation of Chemical
Sensor Device for Logging and Analysing Viticulture Data
Enobong
is investigating into developing a novel set of chemical sensors or
"e-nose" in short, for analysing grapevine and wine taste for a
wider project called "Eno-Humans" that is aimed at building models
to analyse and predict climate change effects in weather conditions
and on wine quality.
email:
ebassey@aut.ac.nz
|
 |
Isaac Nti,
graduated with a Master of Science in Geomatics, University of
Applied Sciences, Karlsruhe, Germany. He is a lecturer in the
Department of Computer Engineering, University of Ghana, Legon.
Project: Modeling,Simulating
and Visualising the Evolution of Physical Landscape.
Isaac is
looking at contemporary physical landscape visualization and
simulation models deployed for environmental impact analysis in
Geoinformatics and will develop a novel generic framework for a
software tool to visualise future evolution of a given landscape.
The software will use past and present scenarios of the landscape to
facilitate micro-management decision making processes. It would as
well serve as tool in the Eno-Humans project for modeling changes in
microclimatic conditions within vineyards. Current methods are
inadequate in obtaining sufficient in depth understanding of the
effects of climate change in the local ecosystem of vineyards.
email: inti@aut.ac.nz |
 |
Peter Sumich is a Chartered Accountant with a
background in Information Systems, Technology Transfer and Financial
Systems. Currently, he is Finance & Planning Manager for the
Faculty of Design & Creative Technologies and Innovation &
Enterprises at AUT University. He is also a contractor for the New
Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA). Peter has a
Masters in Commerce with Honours in Management Science and
Information Systems and has worked across a number of industries
including multinationals, public and private companies, academia and
charitable trusts. In 2003 Peter was Auckland Young Chartered
Accountant of the Year. He has always maintained strong academic and
commercial links. Peter has represented New Zealand in sailing and
performing arts.
Project: Using
Econometric Modelling and Simulation Technology to Improve Yield
Forecasting and Financial Planning in Vineyards and for the Wine
Industry.
Businesses are constantly trying to find better
information or ways of reporting information to improve decision
making in the short and long-term. The credibility of data and
information always come into question when the information systems
are not integrated and there are material 'gaps' between operational
and financial systems. The ultimate aim of this project is to
measure the financial impact of using environmental data, advanced
simulation technologies and econometric modelling to assist in
better decisions making. More accurate yield predictions in
vineyards should lead to improved productivity and improved
financial returns on investments. This could be replicated from the
micro to the macro level. The framework, modelling and simulation
technology should be generic for all crop industries. However, this
project will focus on the wine industry as a pilot due to its huge
growth. Growers are asking for more reliable and relevant
management/financial systems, information and
controls.
email: psumich@aut.ac.nz |
 |
Cristian
Lorenzo Vidal Silva is a computer engineer and
has a Master in Computer Sciences. He is currently lecturing in
University of Talca, Chile.
Project: Formal Modelling in
Spatio-Temporal Information System
To use
and extend some software engineering formal methods for analysis and
design spatio-temporal information systems, and applying that in
some study cases. It includes evaluation of the performance and the
flexibility using the proposed extensions in some traditional and
current software engineering approaches such as waterfall and
extreme programming. It's an idea to work with actual object
oriented formal methods, design tools and development tools, such as
Object-Z, JML, UML and RUBY.
email: cristianvidal@udec.cl |
 |
Sara Zandi, Sara is
a research officer in the Centre. She has a BSc in Computer and
Information Sciences. She is undertaking MPhil degree research in
the GRC. Her research topic relates to Geoinformatics and Geospatial
Database Processing. She is also engaged in database and web
monitoring application development currently underway at GRC.
She mostly works with the GRC's real time database (design and
development) and also the web monitoring application interface for
the various monitoring projects of the GRC.
Project: A
Special-purpose Navigation Instrument for Geospatial Database
Processing
A navigation instrument in geospatial data processing
is a set of computer programs that combine as an integrated software
tool (instrument) for a specific purpose. In this case, the
instrument will be used to navigate a large set of climatologically,
atmospheric, plant and soil data relating to environmental
influences on grape growing and wine production. The project is
two-fold. First, is to develop a Relational Database Management
System (RDBMS) that can store geometry data as well as non-GIS data
such as quantitative and qualitative data. In other words, an
n-dimensional data model covering (two-dimensional geography plus a
time dimension) is needed to enable the dependency relationships to
be associated logically in a database schema. Second is how to
process and extract information from that database using a query
based application. The current database only works with simple data
types, such as INTEGER values which are not good enough for this
type of application. Special purpose software will bring together
locational data from different sensor stations and thus provide an
integral component for the management and analysis of the logged
data. In addition, this software can be developed to provide access
that is intuitive and representational for users' of spatial data
and its analysis without them having to be experts in a GIS
language. Data can be observed in different time periods or
manipulated in various ways in order to build crop management
scenarios that are environmental influence oriented.
email:
szandi@aut.ac.nz |
| Postgraduate Researchers to be
arrived in 2010 |
|
Ozair Ahmed
Khan, United Arab
Emirates
|
|
Wiafe
Owusu-Banahene from the University of Ghana will be
undertaking PhD studies at AUT University in August 2010. He will be
researching techniques for visualising environmental influence
factors in viticulture.
Project:
Visualisation Techniques for Modelling Environmental Influences in
Viticulture
Wiafe is looking at data depiction techniques and
enhancements generally applied to modelling environmental influence
factors in viticulture. He is interested in deploying 1) clustering
techniques applied to analysing multivariate data sets with standard
pixel representation practices and 2) dependency relationship
visualisation methodologies with self-organising map (SOM)
techniques. Thus, the two main sets of approaches being investigated
through this project are; Artificial neural net (ANN) based and Non
ANN based but used in complimentary to each other sets. By
integrating techniques from both sets Wiafe will ultimately develop
a single system to enhance the visualization of environmental
influence factors in viticulture especially for use in assessing any
environmental impact with novel data visualisation techniques for
decision making and in determining "what makes a good year for
wine". The system would facilitate visualisation techniques over a
distributed system, such as the Internet, and provide functions with
user interface useful to both experts and novices.
email: banahene@ug.edu.gh | |