Global Monitoring for Security and Stability (GMOSS) - Integrated Scientific and Technological Research Supporting Security Aspects of the European Union

This report is a collection of scientific activities and achievements of members of the GMOSS Network of Excellence during the period March 2004 to November 2007. Exceeding the horizon of classical remote-sensing-focused projects, GMOSS is characterized by the integration of political and social aspects of security with the assessment of remote sensing capabilities and end-users support opportunities. The report layout reflects the work breakdown structure of GMOSS and is divided into four parts. Part I Concepts and Integration addresses the political background of European Security Policy and possibilities for Earth Observation technologies for a contribution. Besides it illustrates integration activities just as the GMOSS Gender Action Plan or a description of the GMOSS testcases. Part II of this book presents various Application activities conducted by the network partners. The contributions vary from pipeline sabotage analysis in Iraq to GIS studies about groundwater vulnerability in Gaza Strip, from Population Monitoring in Zimbabwe to Post-Conflict Urban Reconstruction Assessments and many more. Part III focuses on the research and development of image processing methods and Tools. The themes range from SAR interferometry for the measurement of Surface Displacement to Robust Satellite Techniques for monitoring natural hazards like volcanoes and earthquakes. Further subjects are the 3D detection of buildings in VHR imagery or texture analysis techniques on time series of satellite images with variable illumination and many other more. The report closes with Part IV. In the chapter ¿The Way Forward¿ a review on four years of integrated work is done. Challenges and achievements during this period are depicted. It ends with an outlook about a possible way forward for integrated European security research.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

Novel Satellite-Based Methodologies for Multi-Sensor and Multi-Scale Environmental Monitoring to Preserve Natural Capital

Global warming, as the biggest manifestation of climate change, has changed the distribution of water in the hydrological cycle by increasing the evapotranspiration rate resulting in anthropogenic and natural hazards adversely affecting modern and past human properties and heritage in different parts of the world. The comprehension of environmental issues is critical for ensuring our existence on Earth and environmental sustainability. Environmental modeling can be described as a simplified form of a real system that enhances our knowledge of how a system operates. Such models represent the functioning of various processes of the environment, such as processes related to the atmosphere, hydrology, land surface, and vegetation. The environmental models can be applied on a wide range of spatiotemporal scales (i.e. from local to global and from daily to decadal levels); and they can employ various types of models (e.g. process-driven, empirical or data-driven, deterministic, stochastic, etc.). Satellite remote sensing and Earth Observation techniques can be utilized as a powerful tool for flood mapping and monitoring. By increasing the number of satellites orbiting around the Earth, the spatial and temporal coverage of environmental phenomenon on the planet has in-creased. However, handling such a massive amount of data was a challenge for researchers in terms of data curation and pre-processing as well as required computational power. The advent of cloud computing platforms has eliminated such steps and created a great opportunity for rapid response to environmental crises. The purpose of this study was to gather state-of-the-art remote sensing and/or earth observation techniques and to further the knowledge concerned with any aspect of the use of remote sensing and/or big data in the field of geospatial analysis. In order to achieve the goals of this study, some of the water-related climate-change phenomena were studied via different mathematical, statistical, geomorphological and physical models using different satellite and in-situ data on different centralized and decentralized computational platforms. The structure of this study was divided into three chapters with their own materials, methodologies and results including: (1) flood monitoring; (2) soil water balance modeling; and (3) vegetation monitoring. The results of this part of the study can be summarize in: 1) presenting innovative procedures for fast and semi-automatic flood mapping and monitoring based on geomorphic methods, change detection techniques and remote sensing data; 2) modeling soil moisture and water balance components in the root zone layer using in-situ, drone and satellite data; incorporating downscaling techniques; 3) combining statistical methods with the remote sensing data for detecting inner anomalies in the vegetation covers such as pest emergence; 4) stablishing and disseminating the use of cloud computation platforms such as Google Earth Engine in order to eliminate the unnecessary steps for data curation and pre-processing as well as required computational power to handle the massive amount of RS data. As a conclusion, this study resulted in provision of useful information and methodologies for setting up strategies to mitigate damage and support the preservation of areas and landscape rich in cultural and natural heritage

Advances in Remote Sensing-based Disaster Monitoring and Assessment

Remote sensing data and techniques have been widely used for disaster monitoring and assessment. In particular, recent advances in sensor technologies and artificial intelligence-based modeling are very promising for disaster monitoring and readying responses aimed at reducing the damage caused by disasters. This book contains eleven scientific papers that have studied novel approaches applied to a range of natural disasters such as forest fire, urban land subsidence, flood, and tropical cyclones

Wildfire Hazard and Risk Assessment

Wildfire risk can be perceived as the combination of wildfire hazards (often described by likelihood and intensity) with the susceptibility of people, property, or other valued resources to that hazard. Reflecting the seriousness of wildfire risk to communities around the world, substantial resources are devoted to assessing wildfire hazards and risks. Wildfire hazard and risk assessments are conducted at a wide range of scales, from localized to nationwide, and are often intended to communicate and support decision making about risks, including the prioritization of scarce resources. Improvements in the underlying science of wildfire hazard and risk assessment and in the development, communication, and application of these assessments support effective decisions made on all aspects of societal adaptations to wildfire, including decisions about the prevention, mitigation, and suppression of wildfire risks. To support such efforts, this Special Issue of the journal Fire compiles articles on the understanding, modeling, and addressing of wildfire risks to homes, water resources, firefighters, and landscapes

Innovation Issues in Water, Agriculture and Food

In a worldwide context of ever-growing competition for water and land, climate change, droughts and man-made water scarcity, and less-participatory water governance, agriculture faces the great challenge of producing enough food for a continually increasing population. In this line, this book provides a broad overview of innovation issues in the complex water–agriculture–food nexus, thus also relative to their interconnections and dependences. Issues refer to different spatial scales, from the field or the farm to the irrigation system or the river basin. Multidisciplinary approaches are used when analyzing the relationships between water, agriculture, and food security. The covered issues are quite diverse and include: innovation in crop evapotranspiration, crop coefficients and modeling; updates in research relative to crop water use and saving; irrigation scheduling and systems design; simulation models to support water and agricultural decisions; issues to cope with water scarcity and climate change; advances in water resource quality and sustainable uses; new tools for mapping and use of remote sensing information; and fostering a participative and inclusive governance of water for food security and population welfare. This book brings together a variety of contributions by leading international experts, professionals, and scholars in those diverse fields. It represents a major synthesis and state-of-the-art on various subjects, thus providing a valuable and updated resource for all researchers, professionals, policymakers, and post-graduate students interested in the complex world of the water–agriculture–food nexus

Rapid response for flood detection implementing the rst approach on MSG/SEVIRI data

Floods are one of the most catastrophic natural disasters around the globe, impacting human lives and infrastructures. Mainly because of climate change, floods will occur with increasingly frequency and intensity in the future, threatening many regions of the world. In such context, a system able to give early and frequently updated information about the areas involved by floods is crucial to manage flood risk in the crisis and post-crisis emergency phases. In this paper the potential of a general and automatic methodology, named Robust Satellite Techniques (RST), has been tested when implemented on Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) daytime data, to have a satellite reliable tool for a rapid detection of flooded areas. In this paper results achieved applying such an approach to study the Berg river flood, occurred in the South Africa Cape Town region in July 2007, are shown and discussed

Image Registration Workshop Proceedings

Automatic image registration has often been considered as a preliminary step for higher-level processing, such as object recognition or data fusion. But with the unprecedented amounts of data which are being and will continue to be generated by newly developed sensors, the very topic of automatic image registration has become and important research topic. This workshop presents a collection of very high quality work which has been grouped in four main areas: (1) theoretical aspects of image registration; (2) applications to satellite imagery; (3) applications to medical imagery; and (4) image registration for computer vision research

Produttivita primaria dell' ecosistema marino, turbolenza oceanica e cicli biogeochimici globali

Il ciclo globale del carbonio e la concentrazione atmosferica di CO2 sono influenzati dai flussi biogeochimici fra oceano ed atmosfera. Questi flussi dipendono dal funzionamento dell’ecosistema marino; modifiche significative nella dinamica del plancton e nella produttività primaria possono avere rilevanti effetti sul clima. La dinamica del plancton, a sua volta, risente degli effetti di trasporto e rimescolamento indotti dalle strutture a mesoscala quali vortici e fronti, che per questo motivo sono uno degli attori sulla scena della dinamica del clim