@inproceedings{a4ba5795ec384908861a7a2a43e7608f,
title = "The global network of outdoor webcams: Properties and applications",
abstract = "There are thousands of outdoor webcams which offer live images freely over the Internet. We report on methods for discovering and organizing this already existing and massively distributed global sensor, and argue that it provides an interesting alternative to satellite imagery for global-scale remote sensing applications. In particular, we characterize the live imaging capabilities that are freely available as of the summer of 2009 in terms of the spatial distribution of the cameras, their update rate, and characteristics of the scene in view. We offer algorithms that exploit the fact that webcams are typically static to simplify the tasks of inferring relevant environmental and weather variables directly from image data. Finally, we show that organizing and exploiting the large, ad-hoc, set of cameras attached to the web can dramatically increase the data available for studying particular problems in phenology.",
keywords = "Calibration, Camera network, Global, Metadata, Phenology, Webcam",
author = "Nathan Jacobs and Walker Burgin and Nick Fridrich and Austin Abrams and Kylia Miskell and Braswell, {Bobby H.} and Richardson, {Andrew D.} and Robert Pless",
year = "2009",
doi = "10.1145/1653771.1653789",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "9781605586496",
series = "GIS: Proceedings of the ACM International Symposium on Advances in Geographic Information Systems",
pages = "111--120",
booktitle = "17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2009",
note = "17th ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems, ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS 2009 ; Conference date: 04-11-2009 Through 06-11-2009",
}