Identification and monitoring of oil pipeline spill fire using space applications

Oil pipeline spills in the Niger Delta cause a great deal of environmental damage to sensitive ecosystems and losses of many millions of dollars to the Nigerian economy every year. These spills occur along the routes of pipeline infrastructure and other oil facilities like flowlines, trunk lines, flow stations, barges, well heads etc. The causes of these spill events include: operational or maintenance error, ageing oil facilities, as well as acts of deliberate sabotage of the pipeline equipment which often result in explosions and fire outbreaks. In this project, we have investigated whether satellite observations could be used to detect these oil pipeline fires. The Nigerian National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) database contains a total of 10 072 oil spill reports from 2007 to 2015. The space-based approach we considered in this dissertation included the use of data gathered by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, which recorded 85 129 active fire hotspots in the Niger Delta from 2007 to 2015. Since the oil spill reports serve as validation data for these oil spill fires, we explored the capability of the MODIS instrument to study the spatio-temporal correlation between spills and fire events by attempting to investigate whether the largest spills by volume that resulted in fires could be detected from space in near-real time. Although the NOSDRA oil spill reports are plagued with several irregularities from the Joint Investigation Visits by the joint task force who visit spill sites, our approach in this dissertation automated the filtering process of the raw database to meet our research goal and objective. This study confirms that, indeed, fires resulting from oil spills are detectable using the MODIS fire products. For 43 of the largest spill events, we were able to establish a spatio-temporal correlation of spill incident reports with MODIS fires clearly associated with the oil pipeline infrastructure. Our study also shed light on the spatial and temporal characteristics of non-pipeline fires in the study area

Book of short Abstracts of the 11th International Symposium on Digital Earth

The Booklet is a collection of accepted short abstracts of the ISDE11 Symposium

Global Forest Monitoring from Earth Observation

Covering recent developments in satellite observation data undertaken for monitoring forest areas from global to national levels, this book highlights operational tools and systems for monitoring forest ecosystems. It also tackles the technical issues surrounding the ability to produce accurate and consistent estimates of forest area changes, which are needed to report greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land use changes. Written by leading global experts in the field, this book offers a launch point for future advances in satellite-based monitoring of global forest resources. It gives readers a deeper understanding of monitoring methods and shows how state-of-art technologies may soon provide key data for creating more balanced policies

The global tree carrying capacity (keynote)

editorial reviewe

SPICA:revealing the hearts of galaxies and forming planetary systems : approach and US contributions

How did the diversity of galaxies we see in the modern Universe come to be? When and where did stars within them forge the heavy elements that give rise to the complex chemistry of life? How do planetary systems, the Universe's home for life, emerge from interstellar material? Answering these questions requires techniques that penetrate dust to reveal the detailed contents and processes in obscured regions. The ESA-JAXA Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) mission is designed for this, with a focus on sensitive spectroscopy in the 12 to 230 micron range. SPICA offers massive sensitivity improvements with its 2.5-meter primary mirror actively cooled to below 8 K. SPICA one of 3 candidates for the ESA's Cosmic Visions M5 mission, and JAXA has is committed to their portion of the collaboration. ESA will provide the silicon-carbide telescope, science instrument assembly, satellite integration and testing, and the spacecraft bus. JAXA will provide the passive and active cooling system (supporting the

The Apertif Surveys:The First Six Months

Apertif is a new phased-array feed for the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), greatly increasing its field of view and turning it into a natural survey instrument. In July 2019, the Apertif legacy surveys commenced; these are a time-domain survey and a two-tiered imaging survey, with a shallow and medium-deep component. The time-domain survey searches for new (millisecond) pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs). The imaging surveys provide neutral hydrogen (HI), radio continuum and polarization data products. With a bandwidth of 300 MHz, Apertif can detect HI out to a redshift of 0.26. The key science goals to be accomplished by Apertif include localization of FRBs (including real-time public alerts), the role of environment and interaction on galaxy properties and gas removal, finding the smallest galaxies, connecting cold gas to AGN, understanding the faint radio population, and studying magnetic fields in galaxies. After a proprietary period, survey data products will be publicly available through the Apertif Long Term Archive (ALTA, https://alta.astron.nl). I will review the progress of the surveys and present the first results from the Apertif surveys, including highlighting the currently available public data