Chellappa Chairs Workshop to Benefit NOAA Fisheries

Professor Rama Chellappa chaired a two-day workshop on “Robust Methods for the Analysis of Images and Videos for Fisheries Stock Assessment” in support of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The two day workshop took place on May 16-17, 2014.

NMFS is also informally known as NOAA Fisheries of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is responsible for the stewardship of the nation’s living marine resources and their habitat. As part of this charge, NOAA Fisheries conducts stock assessments of the abundance and composition of fish stocks in several bodies of water. NMFS is actively seeking opportunities to improve the quality and reliability of data gathered from still and stereo-video imagery, and to automate more of the stock assessment process.

This workshop was developed to enable experts from diverse communities to share perspectives about the most efficient methods to improve automation of visual information for stock assessments and to discuss near and long term goals. Approximately forty people participated in the workshop.

The goals of the planning committee were to plan and conduct a public workshop that examines the frontiers in methodology for examining image, video, and possibly other sensor data relating to the following tasks important to the National Marine Fisheries Service:

• Automatic counting or characterization of fish as they pass through a trawl against a semi-static background
• Interpreting video (e.g., identifying the species, counting individuals, characterizing their size distribution) from a stationary camera  that views fish against a bottom of a body if water
• Automatic interpretation (counting and characterizing) of individual snapshot images taken from a remotely operated moving camera.
• Automatic counting and characterization of fish in videos against a natural background
• The workshop featured invited presentations and discussions involving individuals and teams from diverse fields to address the following topics:
• Identify promising directions for advancing NMFS’s analytical capabilities for the tasks listed above, including opportunities to leverage capabilities from other fields.
• Share perspectives about the most efficient path toward more automation of fisheries stock assessments, identifying goals that might be achieved 3-5 years of modest R & D investment and goals that should be considered long term.

For more information visit the Board of Mathematical Sciences.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

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