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Dr Nicholas Tate

Dr Nicholas TateSenior Lecturer in Geographic Information

Contact Details

 

I arrived at Leicester in January 1999, prior to which I was a lecturer in the School of Geography, Queen's University, Belfast (1994-1998), a NERC-funded PhD student at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (1991-1994; PhD defended 1995) and a undergraduate student in the Department of Geography, Durham University (1983-1986; First Class Honours awarded 1986; Robin Mills Prize, 1986).

Research Interests

My primary research interests are in the statistical modelling of topographic surfaces with emphasis on characterisation and spatial scaling.  Recent research in this context has been concerned with the application of wavelet methods, error modelling as well as the use of airborne and terrestrial LiDAR for surface generation. 

Recent funded research projects:

    • CHORUS - Gravel bed LiDAR scanning and surface characterisation  (NERC; co-I;  2011-2013);
    • LiDARnet - Terrestrial Laser Scanning (NERC; PI; 2010-2012) as part of the Earth Observation Technology  Cluster, based at the University of Nottingham
    • DeInVader - Detecting and analysing the spread of exotic Acacias in west-Mediterranean biodiverse costal dunes with hyperspectral images and LiDAR (EUFAR; co-I; 2011-2014)
    • EAGLE (EU FP7; Leicester PI; 2011-2014).

Secondary research interests include the modelling of population surfaces (previously funded by ESRC), the application of GIS to palaeoenvironments, philosophic and pedagogic research related to GIS and quantitative methods. Recent funded projects:

    • Supporting undergraduate teaching in quantitative geography: making the connections between schools, universities and the workplace (ESRC; co-I; 2012-13).

A selection of recent representative publications is listed below. In addition I have also co-edited three research books: Advances in Remote Sensing and GIS Analysis (1999), Modelling Scale in Geographical Information Science (2001) both with Peter Atkinson, and Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education (2011) with David Unwin, Ken Foote and David Dibiase.  I have also written a research methods textbook Conducting Research in Human Geography (2000) with Rob Kitchin.

Between 2005 and 2010, I was Director of the HEFCE funded £4.1million SPLINT (Spatial Literacy IN Teaching) Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in the context of GIS and geospatial technologies. I am the current Director of the Leicester LiDAR Research Unit, and also Director of Postgraduate Research, College of Science and Engineering.

External Activities

Editorial Positions

International/national working groups and steering committees

    • Chair, LiDAR-SIG, RSPSoc
    • ISPRS - Commission V - Working Group V / 6
    • Co Chair, IAG sub-commission 4.4: Working Group
    • MAT-SIG, RSPSoc
    • ISARA Steering Committee

Other

    • External Examiner, MSc Defence Geographic Information, Royal School of Military Survey, Cranfield University 2008-11
    • External Examiner, MSc GIS University of Manchester , 2011-
    • Chair,  Accuracy 2010 international conference

PhD Supervision

Current

    • Prem Pandey –Synergistic use of hyper spectral and LiDAR data for sand dune vegetation mapping in Portugal (with Prof Heiko Balzter)
    • Jessica Papke – Monitoring Landslides with radar interferometry (with Tazio Strozzi)
    • Ibrahim Alshwesh – Assigning the extent of the sufficiency of primary health care in the urban centre in Qassim Province by using GIS (with Lex Comber)
    • Emeka Chukwusa - Modelling access to health services (with Lex Comber) 
    • Idris Mohammed  – Health facility location-allocation: a case study of primary health care centres in Port-Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria (with Lex Comber)
    • Mustafa Kose – Using remotely sensed data and LIDAR-derived building volume information for estimating the population of Leicester (with Dr Kevin Tansey)
    • Michael Perry - Applications of remote sensing to urban energy balance studies (with John Remedios)
    • Andrew Tewkesbury – Land use maps from high resolution land cover (with Prof Pete Fisher and Dr Lex Comber)

Completed

    • Cici Alexander (2010) 'Vegetation extraction from LiDAR imagery for topographic mapping'
    • Mohammed Al-Dakhil (2007) 'Classification of Tourism Potential in Al-Qassim area, Saudi Arabia using GIS'
    • Stephen Robinson (2004) 'Modelling the distribution of population using Ordnance Survey vector data sets'
    • William Gosling (2004) 'Characterization of neotropical forest and savannah ecosystems by their modern pollen spectra'


Research Areas for PhD Supervision

GIS; spatial statistics; characterization and modelling of surfaces, applications of LiDAR


Enquiries: If you are interested in studying for a PhD in one of these research areas, please make informal enquiries via geogPhD@le.ac.uk


Recent Publications

Mount N.J., Tate N.J., Sarker M.H., Thorne C.R. (2012) Evolutionary, multi-scale analysis of river bank line retreat using continuous wavelet transforms Geomorphology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2012.07.017.

Alexander C, Tansey K, Kaduk J, Holland D, Tate N.J. (2011) An approach to classification of airborne laser scanning point cloud data in an urban environment International Journal of Remote Sensing 32(24):9151-9169.

Tate, N.J. (2011) GIS is dead, long live GIS&T: an educational commentary on the opening of Pandora’s Box  in:  Unwin, D.J., Foote, K., Tate, N.J. and Dibiase, D.  (eds) Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education pages 345-358.

Foote, K.E., Unwin, D.J., Tate N.J. and DiBiase, D. (2011) GIS&T in higher education: challenges for educators, opportunities for education  in:  Unwin, D.J., Foote, K., Tate, N.J. and Dibiase, D.  (eds) Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education pages 3-16.

DiBiase, D.,  Foote, K.E., Tate N.J.  and Unwin, D.J. (2011) Ways forward for GIS&T education  in:  Unwin, D.J., Foote, K., Tate, N.J. and Dibiase, D.  (eds) Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education pages 453-468.

Unwin, D.J. Foote, K.E., Tate N.J. and  DiBiase, D. (2011) (eds) Teaching Geographical Teaching Geographic Information Science and Technology in Higher Education. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester. 496 p.

Alexander, C., Tansey, K, Kaduk, J., Holland, D., Tate, N.J. (2010) Backscatter coefficient as an attribute for the classification of full-waveform airborne laser scanning data in urban areas. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 65, 423-432.

Tate, N.J. and Fisher, P.F. (2010) (eds)  Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences 20-23rd July 2010, Leicester, UK

Paredes-Hernandez, C.U., Tate, N.J., Tansey, K. J., Fisher, P.F. and Salinas Castillo, W.E. (2010) Increasing the Accuracy of Digital Elevation Models by Means of Geostatistical Conflation. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, 20-23rd July 2010, Leicester, UK.

Paredes-Hernandez, C.U., Tansey, K. J., Tate, N.J. and Salinas Castillo, W.E. (2010) An Accuracy Assessment of Spaceborne X-band (TerraSAR-X) Spotlight Mode InSAR DEMs. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, 20-23rd July 2010, Leicester, UK, p.413-416.

Paredes Hernandez, C.U., Tate, N.J., Tansey, K. J., Fisher, P.F. and Salinas Castillo, W.E. (2010) Increasing the Accuracy of Low Spatial Resolution Digital Elevation Models using Geostatistical Conflation. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Geographic Information Science – Extended Abstracts Volume, 14-17th September 2010, Zurich, Switzerland. Available online from: http://www.giscience2010.org/index.php?page=Terrain-modelling

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