A Neural Network Approach to Flood Mapping Using Satellite Imagery

This paper presents a new approach to flood mapping using satellite synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) images that is based on intelligent techniques. In particular, we apply artificial neural networks, self-organizing Kohonen's maps (SOMs), for SAR image segmentation and classification. Our approach was used to process data from different satellite SAR instruments (ERS-2/SAR, ENVISAT/ASAR, RADARSAT-1) for different flood events: the Tisza river, Ukraine and Hungary, 2001; the Huaihe river, China, 2007; the Mekong river, Thailand and Laos, 2008; and the Koshi river, India and Nepal, 2008

A Utility-Based Reputation Model for Grid Resource Management System

In this paper we propose extensions to the existing utility-based reputation model for virtual organizations (VOs) in grids, and present a novel approach for integrating reputation into grid resource management system. The proposed extensions include: incorporation of statistical model of user behaviour (SMUB) to assess user reputation; a new approach for assigning initial reputation to a new entity in a VO; capturing alliance between consumer and resource; time decay and score functions. The addition of the SMUB model provides robustness and dynamics to the user reputation model comparing to the policy-based user reputation model in terms of adapting to user actions. We consider a problem of integrating reputation into grid scheduler as a multi-criteria optimization problem. A non-linear trade-off scheme is applied to form a composition of partial criteria to provide a single objective function. The advantage of using such a scheme is that it provides a Pareto-optimal solution partially satisfying criteria with corresponding weights. Experiments were run to evaluate performance of the model in terms of resource management using data collected within the EGEE Grid-Observatory project. Results of simulations showed that on average a 45 % gain in performance can be achieved when using a reputation-based resource scheduling algorithm

Is Soil Bonitet an Adequate Indicator for Agricultural Land Appraisal in Ukraine?

Agriculture land appraisal analysis is an important component of the land market. This task is especially essential for Ukraine, which plans to lift the moratorium on land transactions and legalize farmland sales in 2021. Most post-Soviet countries adopted the notion of a soil bonitet—a quantitative score representing natural soil fertility. This score is also proposed in Ukraine to perform agricultural land appraisals. However, this is a static parameter and does not account for the dynamics of actual crop production on the agricultural lands. Moreover, the bonitet score is not crop-specific. Therefore, in this study, we use maps of bonitet based on the soil map and natural-agricultural districts of Ukraine and crop yields at the village scale to explore the relationships between bonitet values and actual crop production in Ukraine. We found that land appraisal is not correlated with the actual soil bonitet

Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 Products for Land Monitoring

The Harmonized Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 (HLS) project is a NASA initiative aiming to produce a seamless, harmonized surface reflectance record from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI) aboard Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 remote sensing satellites, respectively. The HLS products are based on a set of algorithms to obtain seamless products from both sensors (OLI and MSI): atmospheric correction, cloud and cloud-shadow masking, geographic co-registration and common gridding, bidirectional reflectance distribution function normalization and bandpass adjustment. As of version 1.3, the HLS v1.3 data set covers 9.12 million km2 and spans from first Landsat-8 data (2013) to present. HLS products provide near-daily surface reflectance information with a common geometric framework, and are suitable for a variety of agricultural and vegetation monitoring tasks, including analysis of crop type, condition, and phenology

Automatic Sub-Pixel Co-Registration of LandSat-8 OLI and Sentinel-2A MSI Images Using Phase Correlation and Machine Learning Based Mapping

This study investigates misregistration issues between Landsat-8/OLI and Sentinel-2A/MSI at 30 m resolution, and between multi-temporal Sentinel-2A images at 10 m resolution using a phase correlation approach and multiple transformation functions. Co-registration of 45 Landsat-8 to Sentinel-2A pairs and 37 Sentinel-2A to Sentinel-2A pairs were analyzed. Phase correlation proved to be a robust approach that allowed us to identify hundreds and thousands of control points on images acquired more than 100 days apart. Overall, misregistration of up to 1.6 pixels at 30 m resolution between Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2A images, and 1.2 pixels and 2.8 pixels at 10 m resolution between multi-temporal Sentinel-2A images from the same and different orbits, respectively, were observed. The non-linear Random Forest regression used for constructing the mapping function showed best results in terms of root mean square error (RMSE), yielding an average RMSE error of 0.07+/-0.02 pixels at 30 m resolution, and 0.09+/-0.05 and 0.15+/-0.06 pixels at 10 m resolution for the same and adjacent Sentinel-2A orbits, respectively, for multiple tiles and multiple conditions. A simpler 1st order polynomial function (affine transformation) yielded RMSE of 0.08+/-0.02 pixels at 30 m resolution and 0.12+/-0.06 (same Sentinel-2A orbits) and 0.20+/-0.09 (adjacent orbits) pixels at 10 m resolution

The Data Fusion Grid Infrastructure: Project Objectives and Achievements

This paper describes the objectives and achievements of the project "Data Fusion Grid Infrastructure'' jointly supported by INTAS, the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the National Space Agency of Ukraine (NSAU). Within the project, a Grid infrastructure has been developed that integrates the resources of several geographically distributed organizations. The use of Grid technologies is motivated by the need to make computations in the near real-time for fast response to natural disasters and to manage large volumes of satellite data. We show the use of developed Grid infrastructure for a number of applications that heavily rely on Earth observation (EO) data. These applications include: numerical weather prediction (NWP), flood monitoring, biodiversity assessment, and crop yield prediction

Toward Landsat and Sentinel-2 BRDF Normalization and Albedo Estimation: A Case Study in the Peruvian Amazon Forest

The Amazon forest has been the focus of study by the science community during the last few decades. Remote sensing data analysis is the only way to study such a large geographical extent during an extended period of time. Since the launch in 2015 of Sentinel 2 and its increase in temporal resolution through the combination with Landsat sensors, a strong emphasis has been put on exploiting these data. Though these satellites provide near nadir observations, surface reflectance time series are affected by illumination variability throughout the year. These effects can be corrected using a Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) model. Franch et al. (2014a) developed a methodology to derive Landsat surface albedo and BRDF. It is based on the BRDF parameters from the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) which are disaggregated at Landsat spatial resolution (30 m). In this work, we apply the Franch et al. (2014a) method to normalize the surface reflectance for BRDF effects using the NASA's Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) product. We apply this method to the Tambopata region in Peru from 2013 to 2017 and validate it using ground-based albedometer measurements. The results show that the near infrared reflectance can increase up to 0.06 (20%) for low solar angles while the impact on the red range and the NDVI is minor (<0.01). The evaluation of the surface albedo against field measurements shows an error of 0.01

Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 Reflectance Products for Land Monitoring (Invited)

Many land applications require more frequent observations than can be obtained from a single 'Landsat class' sensor. Agricultural monitoring, inland water quality assessment, stand-scale phenology, and numerous other applications all require near-daily imagery at better than 1ha resolution. Thus the land science community has begun expressing a desire for a '30-meter MODIS' global monitoring capability. One cost-effective way to achieve this goal is via merging data from multiple, international observatories into a single virtual constellation. The Harmonized Landsat/Sentinel-2 (HLS) project has been working to generate a seamless surface reflectance product by combining observations from USGS/NASA Landsat-8 and ESA Sentinel-2. Harmonization in this context requires a series of radiometric and geometric transforms to create a single surface reflectance time series agnostic to sensor origin. Radiometric corrections include a common atmospheric correction using the Landsat-8 LaSRC/6S approach, a simple BRDF adjustment to constant solar and nadir view angle, and spectral bandpass adjustments to fit the Landsat-8 OLI reference. Data are then resampled to a consistent 30m UTM grid, using the Sentinel-2 global tile system. Cloud and shadow masking are also implemented. Quality assurance (QA) involves comparison of the output 30m HLS products with near-simultaneous MODIS nadir-adjusted observations. Prototoype HLS products have been processed for approximately 7% of the global land area using the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) compute environment at NASA Ames, and can be downloaded from the HLS web site (https://hls.gsfc.nasa.gov). A wall-to-wall North America data set is being prepared for 2018. This talk will review the objectives and status of the HLS project, and illustrate applications of high-density optical time series data for agriculture and ecology. We also discuss lessons learned from HLS in the general context of implementing virtual constellations