User:Rmautz
Rainer Mautz (* 17. May 1969 in Wiesbaden) is a German Geodesist.
In 1988 he graduated from the Oranienschule, a high school in the city centre of his hometown Wiesbaden. From 1991 to 1996 he studied Surveying Engineering in at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In his diploma thesis [1] he compared classical surveying using total stations with the novel technique of real-time-kinematic (RTK) GPS in cooperation with the Siemens AG in Erlangen. His carrier began in Tanzania, where he applied the differential GPS technique for setting out two 100 km long overhead power lines for the lower Kihansi Dam[2]. A clear turning point in his life was to accept a position as a research assistant in Geodesy at the TU Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. for developing a new heuristic method that avoids Fourier analysis to determine frequencies in time series[3]. Being awarded with a research fellowship from the Humbold Foundation, he extended his analyses for 2D applications using B-spline wavelets[4] at the Ohio State University. After staying two years in the USA, his next domicile was London. At Imperial College he developed an algorithm for network positioning in 3D[5]. Two years later, in 2006, he moved to his current place of residence in Zürich, where he is now senior research assistant & lecturer at the Engineering Geodesy Group at the ETH Zürich.
Travel
Rainer is widely travelled. He visited more than 100 countries, where he used his bicycle as the main means of transportation.
Bicycle Touring
In 1990/91 he went around the world by bicycle. In his one-year-long trip, he cycled 18'000 km in Europe, North America and Asia[6]. Since 1988, when he started his first longer trip from his hometown in Wiesbaden to East Anatolia he cycled 160'000 km in several places all over the world. In China alone, he did several month-long bycicle trips that add up 20'000 km[7][8][9].
Confluencing
He is participating in the Degree Confluence Project, a voluntary project that has the goal to document all interger latitudes and longitudes on land. At the project homepage[10] all documented visits can be viewed. As of 2009, he has visited 250 of those confluece points in 66 countries[11]. In his view, the project is of significance because it allows an unbiased view of our planet[12][13].
References
- ^ http://www1.tu-darmstadt.de/fb/bi/geod/gi/sonstiges/publikationen/diplomarbeiten/jahr1996/mautzr/mautzr.htm [Field-test for GPS in Overhead Wire Construction – Efficiency Research] (German), online collection of diploma theses at the Geodetic Institute of the Technical University Darmstadt
- ^ Surveying Powerlines (German)
- ^ On the Determination of Frequencies in Time Series Solving Nonlinear Adjustment Problems (German), online collection of doctoral theses at the Technical University of Berlin
- ^ Mautz, R. et al.(2005): Efficient Spatial and Temporal Representations of Global Ionosphere Maps over Japan Using B-Spline Wavelets, Journal of Geodesy, vol. 78, no. 11-12, pp. 662–667.
- ^ 3D Wireless Network Localization from Inconsistent Distance Observations
- ^ Spoke notes by Peter Snow Cao
- ^ Collection of Travelloges by BikeChina.com
- ^ Bicycle trip through North-East China
- ^ Bicycle trip from Chengdu to Central Asia
- ^ The Degree Confluence Project
- ^ Map of his visited confluence points at confluence.org
- ^ Mautz, R. (2006): Sampling on the Earth Surface – What Does Our World Really Look Like?, Coordinates – Positioning, Navigation and Beyond, no. 3, pp. 8–11, 2006.
- ^ Mautz, R. (2008): Sampling the World, Coordinates – Positioning, Navigation and Beyond, no. 3, pp. 22–27, 2008.