EO-ALERT: A Novel Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Civil Alerts

Satellite Earth Observation (EO) data is ubiquitously used in many applications, providing basic services to society, such as environment monitoring, emergency management and civilian security. Due to the increasing request of EO products by the market, the classical EO data chain generates a severe bottleneck problem, further exacerbated in constellations. A huge amount of EO raw data generated on-board the satellite must be transferred to ground, slowing down the EO product availability, increasing latency, and hampering the growth of applications in accordance with the increased user demand. This paper provides an overview of the results achieved by the EO-ALERT project (http://eo-alert-h2020.eu/), an H2020 European Union research activity led by DEIMOS Space. EO-ALERT proposes the definition and development of the next-generation EO data processing chain, based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves optimised key EO data processing elements from the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering the EO products to the end user with very low latency (quasi-real-time). EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, reaching latencies below 1 minute in some scenarios. The proposed architecture solves the above challenges through a combination of innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications. Namely, the architecture introduces innovative technological solutions, including on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of alerts (EO products) using Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board data compression and encryption using AI, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground, including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage. The paper presents the proposed architecture, its performance and hardware, considering two different user scenarios; ship detection and extreme weather observation/nowcasting. The results show that, when implemented using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to ground with latency lower than five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EOALERT concept and architecture. The paper also discusses the implementation on an avionics test bench for testing the architecture with real EO data, with the aim of demonstrating that it can meet the requirements of the considered scenarios in terms of detection performance and provides technologies at a high TRL (4-5). When proven, this will open unprecedented opportunities for the exploitation of civil EO products, especially in latency sensitive scenarios, such as disaster management

EO-ALERT: A Novel Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Civil Alerts

The EO-ALERT project proposes the definition and development of the next-generation Earth Observation (EO) data processing chain, based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves opti-mised key EO data processing elements from the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering EO products to the end user with very low latency. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, and below 1 minute in some scenarios. The proposed archi-tecture combines innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications, namely: on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of alerts (EO products) using Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board AI-based data compression and encryption, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground, including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage. This paper pre-sents the proposed architecture, its performance and hardware, considering two different user scenarios: ship detection and extreme weather nowcasting. The results show that, when implemented using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to ground with latency below five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EO-ALERT concept

A Novel Satellite Architecture for the Next Generation of Earth Observation Satellites Supporting Rapid Alerts

The EO-ALERT European Commission H2020 project proposes the definition, development, and verification and validation through ground hardware testing, of a next-generation Earth Observation (EO) data processing chain. The proposed data processing chain is based on a novel flight segment architecture that moves EO data processing elements traditionally executed in the ground segment to on-board the satellite, with the aim of delivering EO products to the end user with very low latency. EO-ALERT achieves, globally, latencies below five minutes for EO products delivery, and below one minute in realistic scenarios. The proposed EO-ALERT architecture is enabled by on-board processing, recent improvements in processing hardware using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components, and persistent space-to-ground communications links. EO-ALERT combines innovations in the on-board elements of the data chain and the communications, namely: on-board reconfigurable data handling, on-board image generation and processing for the generation of alerts (EO products) using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), on-board AI-based data compression and encryption, high-speed on-board avionics, and reconfigurable high data rate communication links to ground, including a separate chain for alerts with minimum latency and global coverage. This paper presents the proposed architecture, its hardware realization for the ground testing in a representative environment and its performance. The architecture’s performance is evaluated considering two different user scenarios where very low latency (almost-real-time) EO product delivery is required: ship detection and extreme weather monitoring/nowcasting. The hardware testing results show that, when implemented using COTS components and available communication links, the proposed architecture can deliver alerts to the end user with a latency below five minutes, for both SAR and Optical missions, demonstrating the viability of the EO-ALERT architecture. In particular, in several test scenarios, for both the TerraSAR-X SAR and DEIMOS-2 Optical Very High Resolution (VHR) missions, hardware testing of the proposed architecture has shown it can deliver EO products and alerts to the end user globally, with latency lower than one-point-five minutes

Determination of nutrient salts by automatic methods both in seawater and brackish water: the phosphate blank

9 páginas, 2 tablas, 2 figurasThe main inconvenience in determining nutrients in seawater by automatic methods is simply solved: the preparation of a suitable blank which corrects the effect of the refractive index change on the recorded signal. Two procedures are proposed, one physical (a simple equation to estimate the effect) and the other chemical (removal of the dissolved phosphorus with ferric hydroxide).Support for this work came from CICYT (MAR88-0245 project) and Conselleria de Pesca de la Xunta de GaliciaPeer reviewe

Research Data for "Comparison of detectability of ship wake components between C-Band and X-Band synthetic aperture radar sensors operating under different slant ranges"

This research data repository contains the datasets for publication "Comparison of detectability of ship wake components between C-Band and X-Band synthetic aperture radar sensors operating under different slant ranges" in ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.For each sensor and each wake component one data file is added to the uploaded .zip-archive. The sensors TerraSAR-X, CosmoSkymed, Sentinel-1 and RADARSAT-2 are abbreviated tsx, csk, s1 and rs2, respectively. The wake components near-hull turbulence, turbulent wake, Kelvin wake arm and V-narrow wake are abbreviated nt, tw, kw and vw, respectively. The result is a collection of 16 main datasets.For uncertainty estimation each of the main datasets is split into five data subsets. The subsets extend the file name of the MAIN dataset by MIX1, MIX2, MIX3, MIX4 and MIX5, respectively. The results are a collection of 80 data subsets.In total 96 dataset are available.The format of the datasets follows the .arff format, which is readable by the Data Science Tool “Weka” (https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/ml/weka/index.html) and also by human using any text editor. Each data row defines one candidate wake sample. The columns define the five influencing parameters and the wake component length of the respective dataset by:Wind speed, incidence angle, ship velocity, ship length, 90°-projected relative ship heading, wake component lengthTHIS DATASET IS ARCHIVED AT DANS/EASY, BUT NOT ACCESSIBLE HERE. TO VIEW A LIST OF FILES AND ACCESS THE FILES IN THIS DATASET CLICK ON THE DOI-LINK ABOV

Enzymic and autoxidation of lipids in low fat foods: model of linoleic acid in emulsified triolein and vegetable oils.

Microbial adaptations to environmental extremes, including high temperature and low pH conditions typical of geothermal settings, are of interest in astrobiology and origin of life investigations. The lipid biomarkers preserved in silica deposits associated with six geothermal areas in the Taupo Volcanic Zone were investigated and variations in lipid composition as a function of temperature and pH were assessed. Lipid analyses reveal highly variable abundances and distributions, reflecting community composition as well as adaptations to extremes of pH and temperature. Biomarker profiles reveal three distinct microbial assemblages across the sites: the first in Champagne Pool and Loop Road, the second in Orakei Korako, Opaheke and Ngatamariki, and the third in Rotokawa. Similar lipid distributions are observed in sinters from physicochemically similar springs. Furthermore, correlation between lipid distributions and geothermal conditions is observed. The ratio of archaeol to bacterial diether abundance, bacterial diether average chain length, degree of GDGT cyclisation and C31 and C32 hopanoic acid indices typically increase with temperature. At lower pH, the ratio of archaeol to bacterial diethers, degree of GDGT cyclisation and C31 and C32 hopanoic acid indices are typically higher. No trends in fatty acid distributions with temperature or pH are evident, likely reflecting overprinting due to population influences