Commemorative Issue of Defence Science Journal on Golden Jubilee of DRDO

Defence Research and Development Organisation(DRDO), Ministry of Defence, is dedicatedly working towards enhancing self-reliance in Defence systems. DRDO undertakes design and development leading to production of world class weapon systems and equipment in accordance withthe expressed needs and the qualitative requirements laid  down by the three Services. The vision of DRDO is tomake India prosperous by establishing world class science and technology base and provide the Defence Services a decisive edge by equipping them with internationally competitive systems and solutions.Defence Science Journal, 2010, 60(2), pp.121-123, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.60.34

Defence Science Journal: Sixty Successful Years of Publication

Its objective is to stimulate study and research in science fundamental and appliedin relation to the problems of Defence. It serves to bring to the notice of the scientists in universities and other research institutions the basic problems in Defence science, the work that is being done in this field and its importance and also the role of Defence Science in the progress of science generally. A properly conducted Defence Science Journal will go a long way in creating and sustaining interest amongst the research workers in universities and civil institutions, in Defence Science and Technology.Defence Science Journal, 2009, 59(4), pp.321-325, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.59.152

Chemical characteristics of PM<SUB>10</SUB> aerosols and airmass trajectories over Bay of Bengal and Arabian sea during ICARB

For the first time, chemical characterization of PM10 aerosols was attempted over the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and Arabian Sea (AS) during the ICARB campaign. Dominance of SO42-, NH4+ and NO3- was noticed over both the regions which indicated the presence of ammonium sulphate and ammonium nitrate as major water soluble particles playing a very important role in the radiation budget. It was observed that all the chemical constituents had higher concentrations over Bay of Bengal as compared to Arabian Sea. Higher concentrations were observed near the Indian coast showing influence of landmass indicating that gaseous pollutants like SO2, NH3 and NO x are transported over to the sea regions which consequently contribute to higher SO42-, NH4+ and NO3- aerosols respectively. The most polluted region over BoB was 13&#176;-19&#176;N and 70&#176;-90&#176;E while it was near 11&#176;N and 75&#176;E over AS. Although the concentrations were higher over Bay of Bengal for all the chemical constituents of PM10 aerosols, per cent non-sea salt (nss) fraction (with respect to Na) was higher over Arabian Sea. Very low Ca2+ concentration was observed at Arabian Sea which led to higher atmospheric acidity as compared to BoB. Nss SO42-alone contributed 48% of total water soluble fraction over BoB as well as AS. Ratios SO42- /NO3- over both the regions (7.8 and 9 over BoB and AS respectively) were very high as compared to reported values at land sites like Allahabad (0.63) and Kanpur (0.66) which may be due to very low NO.3 over sea regions as compared to land sites. Air trajectory analysis showed four classes: (i) airmass passing through Indian land, (ii) from oceanic region, (iii) northern Arabian Sea and Middle East and (iv) African continent. The highest nss SO42- was observed during airmasses coming from the Indian land side while lowest concentrations were observed when the air was coming from oceanic regions. Moderate concentrations of nss SO2- 4 were observed when air was seen moving from the Middle East and African continent. The pH of rainwater was observed to be in the range of 5.9-6.5 which is lower than the values reported over land sites. Similar feature was reported over the Indian Ocean during INDOEX indicating that marine atmosphere had more free acidity than land atmosphere

The LandSense Engagement Platform: Connecting citizens with earth observation data to promote environmental monitoring

The Horizon 2020 project, LandSense, is building a modern citizen observatory for Land Use & Land Cover (LULC) monitoring, by connecting citizens with Earth Observation (EO) data to transform current approaches to environmental decision making. Citizen Observatories are community-driven mechanisms to complement existing environmental monitoring systems and can be fostered through EO-based mobile and web applications, allowing citizens to not only play a key role in LULC monitoring, but also to be directly involved in the co-creation of such solutions. A critical component within the project is the LandSense Engagement Platform, a service platform comprised of highly marketable EO-based solutions that contribute to the transfer, assessment, valuation, uptake and exploitation of LULC data and related results. The platform engages citizens to view, analyze and share data collected from different citizen science campaigns and create their own maps, individually and collaboratively. In addition, citizens can participate in ongoing demonstration pilots using their own devices (e.g. mobile phones and tablets), through interactive reporting and gaming applications, as well as launching their own campaigns. This interaction is achieved by bringing together and extending various key pieces of technology like Geo-Wiki, LACO-Wiki, Geopedia, SentinelHub and the Earth Observation Data Centre. Furthermore, a key pillar of the platform is the LandSense Federation which supports users to authenticate from a variety of login providers using social media (i.e. Facebook and Google) and some 2500 academic institutions globally (eduGAIN). Such a federated approach will promote the awareness, outreach, uptake and ultimately the science of citizen science. Services and solutions from the LandSense Engagement Platform are currrently deployed through a series of citizen science campaigns in Vienna, Toulouse, Amsterdam, Serbia, and Spain covering topics such as urban greenspaces, agricultural management and bird habitat/biodiversity monitoring. The presentation will not only showcase the results from these campaigns, but also highlight how one can link to the platform to exploit its EO services and launch your own citizen science campaigns

Citizen Science and Personal Data Protection

This paper introduces the issues, lessons learned and best practices from the perspective of the H2020 LandSense project. LandSense, is a modern citizen observatory for Land Use & Land Cover (LULC) monitoring, connecting citizens with Earth Observation (EO) data to transform current approaches to environmental decision making. A critical component within the project is the LandSense Engagement Platform, a service platform comprised of highly marketable EO-based solutions that contribute to the transfer, assessment, valuation, uptake and exploitation of LULC data and related results. The platform engages citizens to view, analyze and share data collected from different citizen science campaigns and create their own maps, individually and collaboratively. Furthermore, a key pillar of the platform is the LandSense Federation which supports users to authenticate from a variety of login providers using social media (i.e. Facebook and Google) and some 2500 academic institutions globally (eduGAIN). Within LandSense we illustrate a comprehensive implementation solution to overcome the GDPR hurdles and recommend a common interoperable infrastructure architecture. Based on Single-Sign-On and the user’s option to “opt-in”, we offer an extendable platform where operators and citizen scientists can come together. Additionally, it is possible to support the common use of citizen science data, already collected in different operator portals or “data silos.” Operators can opt-in by registering applications, services or data access APIs based on their needs for personal information; the levels include anonymous users, users identified via cryptoname, and users fully identified by their personal profile. This tiered approach provides the opportunity for operators to make applications and services available without the need to become a GDPR compliant data controller or processor if the service does not require personal information. On the other end of the spectrum, it is also possible that a registered application, service or API receives full user profiles after the users’ approval. Using an open standards-based framework, this paper shares experiences and recommendations from the LandSense team, that are relevant for promoting the use of citizen science in Europe while ensuring GDPR compliance

Terahertz Security Image Quality Assessment by No-reference Model Observers

To provide the possibility of developing objective image quality assessment (IQA) algorithms for THz security images, we constructed the THz security image database (THSID) including a total of 181 THz security images with the resolution of 127*380. The main distortion types in THz security images were first analyzed for the design of subjective evaluation criteria to acquire the mean opinion scores. Subsequently, the existing no-reference IQA algorithms, which were 5 opinion-aware approaches viz., NFERM, GMLF, DIIVINE, BRISQUE and BLIINDS2, and 8 opinion-unaware approaches viz., QAC, SISBLIM, NIQE, FISBLIM, CPBD, S3 and Fish_bb, were executed for the evaluation of the THz security image quality. The statistical results demonstrated the superiority of Fish_bb over the other testing IQA approaches for assessing the THz image quality with PLCC (SROCC) values of 0.8925 (-0.8706), and with RMSE value of 0.3993. The linear regression analysis and Bland-Altman plot further verified that the Fish__bb could substitute for the subjective IQA. Nonetheless, for the classification of THz security images, we tended to use S3 as a criterion for ranking THz security image grades because of the relatively low false positive rate in classifying bad THz image quality into acceptable category (24.69%). Interestingly, due to the specific property of THz image, the average pixel intensity gave the best performance than the above complicated IQA algorithms, with the PLCC, SROCC and RMSE of 0.9001, -0.8800 and 0.3857, respectively. This study will help the users such as researchers or security staffs to obtain the THz security images of good quality. Currently, our research group is attempting to make this research more comprehensive.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 4 table