Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

New applications and challenges of GNSS variometric approach

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are nowadays widely used in several technical and scientific activities. Since the early stages of development (mid 1980 s), given the high level of accuracy achieved in determining the coordinates of the receiver, it became clear that the extensive deployment of GPS stations all over the world would have improved many tasks in geodesy and geodynamics. The use of GNSS signals is now not only limited to the estimation of the receiver's position, but it has eventually become a key instrument for ionospheric and tropospheric remote sensing studies, and for soil features (GNSS reflectometry). In particular, GNSS can be used to monitor the ionosphere at different time and space scales. On a global scale, GNSS signals are used to generate Global Ionosphere Maps (GIM) by measuring the total electron content from stations located around the world. On a regional scale, the same signals can be used to detect fast ionospheric disturbances, including those generated by natural hazards, such as tsunami and earthquakes. %For these reasons, real-time GNSS applications became particularly relevant in a number of different scientific fields. The Variometric Approach is a processing algorithm for GNSS observations which allow a GNSS receiver to provide valuable real-time information in a stand-alone operative mode. This approach is based on single time differences of suitable linear combinations of GNSS carrier-phase measurements, using a stand-alone GNSS receiver and standard GNSS broadcast products (orbits and clocks corrections) that are available in real-time. This thesis investigates the possibility to apply the Variometric Approach to the monitoring of the ionosphere, in order to detect in real-time ionospheric disturbances generated by tsunami. The first chapter of this thesis will serve as a preface to define fundamental concepts that we will refer to throughout the rest of this work. The rest of this thesis is divided into two main parts. In the first part (chapter~\ref{sec:VADASE}), we present some advances and applications of the VADASE (Variometric Approach for Displacements Analysis Standalone Engine) algorithm to estimate in real time ground velocities and displacements using stand-alone GNSS receivers. This algorithm was eventually appointed as an effective strategy to contribute to GNSS seismology. In this section we used the 2016 Meinong earthquake occurred in Taiwan as a case study and we estimated coseismic displacements and propagation properties of the surface waves in a real-time scenario using low-cost GNSS receivers. The second part of this work (chapters \ref{sec:VARION}, \ref{sec:rtscenario}, and \ref{sec:VARIONimpementation}) is devoted to a new GNSS processing algorithm, VARION (Variometric Approach for Real-Time Ionosphere Observation), which is capable of estimating changes in the ionosphere's Total Electron Content (TEC) using stand-alone GNSS receivers in real time. In chapter~\ref{sec:rtscenario}, the effectiveness of VARION was proven on the following study cases: 2012 Haida Gwaii earthquake and tsunami event, 2015 Chile earthquake and tsunami event, 2013 U.S. East Coast meteotsunami event, and 2017 Mexico tsunami and geomagnetic storm events. Finally, some conclusions and relevant prospects for future VARION developments are outlined. VARION may represent a significant contribution to science because the ionosphere is strongly coupled to the dynamics of the Earth's surface, neutral atmosphere, and geomagnetic field. In particular, these ionospheric perturbations can be used to detect in real time detection atmospheric gravity waves due to tsunamis. During the NASA funded GNSS Tsunami Early Warning System 2017 workshop held in Sendai, Japan, July 25-27 2017, the VARION algorithm was appointed as the first real-time GNSS tsunami tracking and warning system based upon NASA's Global Differential GPS system

Multi-UAV Integrated Internet of Things System for Generating Safe Map in Post-Disaster

芝浦工業大学2019年

Tropical cyclone disaster management using remote sensing and spatial analysis: a review

Tropical cyclones and their often devastating impacts are common in many coastal areas across the world. Many techniques and dataset have been designed to gather information helping to manage natural disasters using satellite remote sensing and spatial analysis. With a multitude of techniques and potential data types, it is very challenging to select the most appropriate processing techniques and datasets for managing cyclone disasters. This review provides guidance to select the most appropriate datasets and processing techniques for tropical cyclone disaster management. It reviews commonly used remote sensing and spatial analysis approaches and their applications for impacts assessment and recovery, risk assessment and risk modelling. The study recommends the post-classification change detection approach through object-based image analysis using optical imagery up to 30. m resolution for cyclone impact assessment and recovery. Spatial multi-criteria decision making approach using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is suggested for cyclone risk assessment. However, it is difficult to recommend how many risk assessment criteria should be processed as it depends on study context. The study suggests the geographic information system (GIS) based storm surge model to use as a basic input in the cyclone risk modelling process due to its simplicity. Digital elevation model (DEM) accuracy is a vital factor for risk assessment and modelling. The study recommends DEM spatial resolution up to 30. m, but higher spatial resolution DEMs always performs better. This review also evaluates the challenges and future efforts of the approaches and datasets

Coastal high-frequency radars in the Mediterranean ??? Part 2: Applications in support of science priorities and societal needs

International audienceThe Mediterranean Sea is a prominent climate-change hot spot, with many socioeconomically vital coastal areas being the most vulnerable targets for maritime safety, diverse met-ocean hazards and marine pollution. Providing an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution at wide coastal areas, high-frequency radars (HFRs) have been steadily gaining recognition as an effective land-based remote sensing technology for continuous monitoring of the surface circulation, increasingly waves and occasionally winds. HFR measurements have boosted the thorough scientific knowledge of coastal processes, also fostering a broad range of applications, which has promoted their integration in coastal ocean observing systems worldwide, with more than half of the European sites located in the Mediterranean coastal areas. In this work, we present a review of existing HFR data multidisciplinary science-based applications in the Mediterranean Sea, primarily focused on meeting end-user and science-driven requirements, addressing regional challenges in three main topics: (i) maritime safety, (ii) extreme hazards and (iii) environmental transport process. Additionally, the HFR observing and monitoring regional capabilities in the Mediterranean coastal areas required to underpin the underlying science and the further development of applications are also analyzed. The outcome of this assessment has allowed us to provide a set of recommendations for future improvement prospects to maximize the contribution to extending science-based HFR products into societally relevant downstream services to support blue growth in the Mediterranean coastal areas, helping to meet the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the EU's Green Deal goals

Coastal high-frequency radars in the Mediterranean - Part 2: Applications in support of science priorities and societal needs

The Mediterranean Sea is a prominent climate-change hot spot, with many socioeconomically vital coastal areas being the most vulnerable targets for maritime safety, diverse met-ocean hazards and marine pollution. Providing an unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution at wide coastal areas, high-frequency radars (HFRs) have been steadily gaining recognition as an effective land-based remote sensing technology for continuous monitoring of the surface circulation, increasingly waves and occasionally winds. HFR measurements have boosted the thorough scientific knowledge of coastal processes, also fostering a broad range of applications, which has promoted their integration in coastal ocean observing systems worldwide, with more than half of the European sites located in the Mediterranean coastal areas. In this work, we present a review of existing HFR data multidisciplinary science-based applications in the Mediterranean Sea, primarily focused on meeting end-user and science-driven requirements, addressing regional challenges in three main topics: (i) maritime safety, (ii) extreme hazards and (iii) environmental transport process. Additionally, the HFR observing and monitoring regional capabilities in the Mediterranean coastal areas required to underpin the underlying science and the further development of applications are also analyzed. The outcome of this assessment has allowed us to provide a set of recommendations for future improvement prospects to maximize the contribution to extending science-based HFR products into societally relevant downstream services to support blue growth in the Mediterranean coastal areas, helping to meet the UN's Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and the EU's Green Deal goals

Importance of vegetation in tsunami mitigation: evidence from large eddy simulations with fluid-structure interactions

Communities worldwide are increasingly interested in nature-based solutions like coastal forests for the mitigation of coastal risks. Still, it remains unclear how much protective benefit vegetation provides, particularly in the limit of highly energetic flows after tsunami impact. The present thesis, using a three-dimensional incompressible computational fluid dynamics model with a fluid-structure interaction approach, aims to quantify how energy reflection and dissipation vary with different degrees of rigidity and vegetation density of a coastal forest. In this study, tree trunks are represented as cylinders, and the elastic modulus of hardwood trees such as pine or oak is used to characterize the rigidity of these cylinders. To capture tsunami bore propagation in onshore, dam break flow is used over the wet surface in the numerical studies. After validating numerical code against experimental studies, multi-cylinder configurations are incorporated and Froude Number is used to scale the flow parameters and vegetation flow parameter (VFP) to scale the tree parameters such as elastic modulus, the diameter of the trunk, etc. Numerical tests are conducted for different cylinder diameters, densities, and elastic moduli. The numerical results show that energy reflection increases with rigidity only for a single cylinder. In the presence of multiple cylinders, the difference in energy reflection created by varying rigidity diminishes as the number of cylinders increases. Instead of rigidity, the blockage area created by the presence of multiple tree trunks is found to dominate energy reflection. As tree trunks are deformed by the hydrodynamic forces, they alter the flow field around them, causing turbulent kinetic energy generation in the wake region. As a consequence, trees dissipate flow energy, highlighting the importance of coastal forests in reducing the onshore energy flux of tsunamis by means of both reflection and dissipation

A Study of Optimal Search and Rescue Operations Planning Problems

Search and Rescue (SAR) systems are vital to provide the quick response for saving lives in the first moments of natural and man-made calamities. In this dissertation, we present and discuss factors related to SAR operations planning and develop three SAR mathematical problems. In the first part we present an overview of SAR operations, highlighting questions affecting aerial search and rescue operations since it is the main object of our Thesis. In the second part, we consider an aerial fleet planning as a resource allocation problem and propose variations in the objective function of a binary integer programming (BIP) model according to different priorities related to area, time and type of the searching operation in high seas. We then study the problem for planning rescue missions in oceanic areas, modeled as a vehicle routing problem considering a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles and respective displacements during the operation. A BIP model is proposed and routing choices are assisted by probabilistic demands at each location that, when visited, may update previous decisions. In the fifth part, we consider the problem for planning a long-range mass rescue operation, modeled as an aircraft routing problem with pick-up and delivering, weight and endurance limits. A BIP model is proposed to minimize the flying time and feasible routes depend on factors such as aircraft endurance, fuel consumption rate, payload, take-off and landing weights, local demand and airfield capacities to operate different types of aircraft. The dissertation ends with conclusions and identified issues for future research

Sea Level Fluctuations

This thematic issue presents 11 scientific articles that are extremely useful for understanding the processes and phenomena of the interacting geospheres of the Earth. These processes have an important impact on the biosphere and many human activities. The results of scientific research presented in this book are fully united by the common theme "investigation of the fundamental foundations of the emergence, development, transformation, and interaction of hydroacoustic, hydrophysical and geophysical fields in the World Ocean." The book is recommended to a wide range of readers, as well as to specialists in the field of hydroacoustics, oceanology, and geophysics

Advanced Geoscience Remote Sensing

Nowadays, advanced remote sensing technology plays tremendous roles to build a quantitative and comprehensive understanding of how the Earth system operates. The advanced remote sensing technology is also used widely to monitor and survey the natural disasters and man-made pollution. Besides, telecommunication is considered as precise advanced remote sensing technology tool. Indeed precise usages of remote sensing and telecommunication without a comprehensive understanding of mathematics and physics. This book has three parts (i) microwave remote sensing applications, (ii) nuclear, geophysics and telecommunication; and (iii) environment remote sensing investigations