Rate My Professor David Belton

Dr David Belton is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin University, within the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Specializing in surveying and spatial sciences, his research centers on laser scanning and photogrammetry, with emphasis on automated processing, classification, and segmentation of 3D point cloud data. He has expertise across diverse platforms including terrestrial and mobile mapping systems, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and underwater laser scanning. Applications of his work include mining, agriculture, engineering and structural analysis, heritage documentation, urban corridor capture, and marine growth quantification on pipelines.

Belton earned his PhD in Spatial Sciences from Curtin University in 2008, focusing on automatic point cloud segmentation and classification. He also holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics with Honours from Curtin University. Post-graduation, he served as a researcher at Curtin University and the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, advancing projects in automated processing and multi-modal sensor fusion. In his current role, he teaches mine surveying, integrated surveying, coordinate and mapping systems, photogrammetry, and laser scanning. Belton has authored or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, including 'Robust segmentation in laser scanning 3D point cloud data' (with A. Nurunnabi and G. West), 'Crop height monitoring using a consumer-grade camera and UAV Technology' (with P. Helmholz, J. Long, and A. Zerihun), and 'Non-parametric belief propagation for mobile mapping sensor fusion.' He has supervised numerous PhD, MPhil, and Honours students. Professionally, he serves on the Western Australian committee of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI) for mining and engineering surveying, is a member of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) Working Group I/10, and acts as a reviewer for leading journals in the field.