The viva examination for the Masters of Science program has ended, and we are excited to announce that Nurul Hidayah Binti Mat Zaki (P4709) has successfully defended her thesis. Her thesis topic was “Assessing Optimal UAV-Data Pre-Processing Workflows for Quality Ortho-Image Generation to Support Coral Reef Mapping.”

Coral reefs are facing increasing threats from human activities, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in coral reef mapping has become increasingly popular as they provide a cost-effective and efficient way to collect data and monitor coral reefs. However, the data collected by UAVs need to be pre-processed before they can be used for coral reef mapping.

Nurul Hidayah’s thesis aimed to evaluate different UAV-data pre-processing workflows to determine the best for generating high-quality ortho-images that can be used for coral reef mapping. By assessing different workflows, her thesis contributed to the coral reef mapping and conservation field.

We are proud of Nurul Hidayah’s achievement and the impact it will have in coral reef mapping. We wish her all the best in her future endeavours and look forward to the publication out of her thesis.