1,720,971 research outputs found
Achievements of the prefer project in the prevention phase of the forest fire management
No full textThe three years FP7 project PREFER (Space-based information support for the Prevention and Recovery of Forest Fires Emergency in the Mediterranean Area) devoted to develop a satellite based service infrastructure capable to provide up-to-date information to support the preparedness, prevention, recovery and reconstruction phases of the Forest Fires emergency cycle in the European Mediterranean Region, has been successfully completed at the end of 2015. However, the project consortium will make available its products for the 2016 summer season, too. The present paper aims at presenting the project achievements emphasizing the most innovative information products developed in the framework of the project. For such products the methodology, validation and demonstration results will be presented and discussed
Urban growth assessment around Winam Gulf of Kenya based on satellite imagery
No full textUrban growth and population dynamics are among the most critical information needed for future economic development planning, natural resources allocation and environmental management. In the present work, two methods, the first based on night-time images produced by NOAA and population maps provided by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) LandScan, and the second one on SAR imagery, were used in order to assess the expansion of urban areas surrounding the Winam Gulf (Lake Victoria, Kenya) at different scales. In the time covered by night-time lights imagery, the study highlighted a period of constant growth rate between 2002 and 2006 and a negative trend after 2006 and 2008. This decrease may be related to two main events occurring in the study area between 2006 and 2007: the decline of the Lake Victoria level and the abnormal proliferation of the floating weeds within the Winam Gulf. Meanwhile, the urban feature extraction obtained at a different scale within a particular district from 1997 up to 2008 results in a constant growth rate. Population movements around this zone explain different dynamics that should be studied in detail in order to understand their particular roots
Sugarcane biomass estimate based on sar imagery: A radar systems comparison
No full textSBAM (Satellite Based Agricultural Monitoring) is a project funded by Italian Space Agency in the framework of Italian-Kenya cooperation. The project has four main objectives: a) to produce an updated map of the agricultural areas for Kenya based on Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 imagery; b) to develop an automatic monitoring system able to classify agricultural areas and detect land use changes; c) to develop and deliver to the Kenyan partner of the project a system capable to download and process automatically Landsat8, Sentinel2, MODIS and MSG/SEVIRI images by providing standard products (vegetation indices, statistics, temporal analysis, etc.); d) to provide a tool for assessing changes in the agricultural area stability and crop yield. and study the feasibility of a tool capable to forecast crop yields. The paper is devoted to describe the activity carried out in the field of forecasting crop yield by using biomass estimate based on SAR images. The results obtained by using images acquired by X-band (Cosmo-Skymed), C-Band (Sentinel-1) and L-band (PALSAR) systems on a study area devoted to sugarcane will be described
development and validation of fire damage-severity indices in the framework of the PREFER project
No full textPREFER (space-based information support for prevention and recovery of forest fires emergency in the Mediterranean area) is one of the Copernicus FP7 Emergency projects funded in 2012. It is uniquely devoted to forest pre- and post-fire management. The overall goal of the project is to develop and demonstrate a preoperational portfolio of products, based on Earth observation data for helping fire management on a Mediterranean scale. Samples of the PREFER information products are available to stakeholders through the project Geoserver (prefer.cgspace.it). The project foresees the utilization of satellite images' optical and SAR at medium (MODIS-moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer), high (Landsat, Spot-Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre), and very high (KOMPSAT-Korea Multi-Purpose Satellite, RapidEye, Pleiades, COSMO-SkyMed-constellation of small satellites for Mediterranean basin observation, and TanDEM-X-TerraSAR-X add on for digital elevation measurement) spatial resolution, and a refresh rate of the products varying from high (days) to low (twice a month) to very low (once a year). The present paper is devoted to introducing the methodology developed for computing one of the project product, i.e., the damage-severity map. These maps provide the level of damage caused in vegetated areas by fires. Further, the paper aims at presenting the results of the validation of such product carried out during the first semester of 2015. The methodology is based on the utilization of Landsat8/OLI images
The PREFER FP7 project: damage severity maps validation results
No full textPREFER is one of the Copernicus FP7 Emergency projects funded in 2012. It is uniquely devoted to forest pre-and post-fire management. The overall goal of the project is to develop and demonstrate a pre-operational portfolio of products, based on Earth Observation data for helping fires management at Mediterranean scale. Samples of the PREFER (Space-based Information Support for Prevention and REcovery of Forest Fires Emergency in the MediteRranean Area) information products are available to stakeholders through the project Geoserver (prefer.cgspace.it). The project foresees the utilization of satellite images optical and SAR at low (MODIS), medium (Landsat, Spot) and high (Kompsat, RapidEye, Pleiades, Cosmo-SkyMed, TanDEM-X, etc.) spatial resolution and a refresh rate of the products varying from high (days) to low (twice a month) to very low (once a year). The present paper is devoted to introduce the methodology developed for computing the maps of the level of damage caused in vegetated areas by fires and to present the results of the validation process just starte
ASSESSMENT OF THE ABNORMAL GROWTH OF FLOATING MACROPHYTES IN WINAM GULF (KENYA) BY USING MODIS IMAGERY TIME SERIES
No full textThe objective of this research study is to assess the capability of time-series of MODIS imagery to provide information suitable for enhancing the understanding of the temporal cycles shown by the abnormal growth of the floating macrophytes in order to support monitoring and management action of Lake Victoria water resources. The proliferation of invasive plants and aquatic weeds is of growing concern. Starting from 1989, Lake Victoria has been interested by the high infestation of water hyacinth with significant socio-economic impact on riparian populations. In this paper, we describe an approach based on the time-series of MODIS to derive the temporal behaviour, the abundance and distribution of the floating macrophytes in the Winam Gulf (Kenyan portion of the Lake Victoria) and its possible links to the concentrations of the main water constituencies. To this end, we consider the NDVI values computed from the MODIS imagery time-series from 2000 to 2009 to identify the floating macrophytes cover and an appropriate bio-optical model to retrieve, by means of an inverse procedure, the concentrations of chlorophyll a, coloured dissolved organic matter and total suspended solid. The maps of the floating vegetation based on the NDVI values allow us to assess the spatial and temporal dynamics of the weeds with high time resolution. A floating vegetation index (FVI) has been introduced for describing the weeds pollution level. The results of the analysis show a consistent temporal relation between the water constituent concentrations within the Winam Gulf and the FVI, especially in the proximity of the greatest proliferation of floating vegetation in the last 10 years that occurred between the second half of 2006 and the first half of 2007.The adopted approach will be useful to implement an automatic system for monitoring and predicting the floating macrophytes proliferation in Lake Victoria
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Are the PREFER project products devoted to support fire prevention and recovery suitable to South-America ?
No full textPREFER (Space-based information support for the Prevention and Recovery of Forest Fires Emergency in the Mediterranean Area) is a three years project devoted to develop a satellite based service infrastructure capable to provide up-to-date information to support the preparedness, prevention, recovery and reconstruction phases of the Forest Fires emergency cycle in the European Mediterranean Region. The project has been successfully completed at the end of 2015. This paper aims at illustrating some of the project achievements and discuss their applicability to manage forest fires in South-America
Satellite-based products for supporting forest fires prevention and recovery in Europe
No full textThe main purpose of the FP7 PREFER project is to set up a space-based service infrastructure and up-to-date cartographic products, based on remote sensing data, to support the preparedness, prevention, recovery and reconstruction phases of the Forest Fires emergency cycle in the European Mediterranean Region. This region is particularly affected by uncontrolled forest fires, with negative consequences on ecosystems, such as desertification and soil erosion, as well as on the local economy and, in extreme situations, causing also the loss of human lives. The present paper aims at illustrating the potential improvement in the forest fires fighting that may result from the use of information obtained by exploiting satellite imagery. The potentiality of satellite based information products will be demonstrated by reporting the results of the demonstration activity carried out during the 2015 summer season
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