Visibility trials for drone detection

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GEO-K, collaborating with the RADARLab of the Electronic Department of the “Tor Vergata” University, is performing drone’s visibility trials making use of its exa-rotor high-quality carbon fiber frame drone, an X-band radar and a corner reflector with known RCS. These tests are going to show the detection capability of Radar Systems, retrieving also the radiometric characterization of commercial drones.

The term “drone” is commonly used to indicate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or an aircraft which is remotely controlled by a ground-based operator. During the last years, drones have increasingly captured the interest of entrepreneurs and investors alike as a means to take over certain tasks, such as commercial, scientific, recreational and agricultural applications, surveillance services, product deliveries and aerial photography. Recently, the growing use of drones also among common people is due to the possibility of purchasing them at a lower price, increasing concerns about their use. Last year, in fact, more than 3456 incidents involving drones were recorded, compared with only 1237 in 2015, PA news agency reported. Moreover, drones have been reported to be used for criminal purposes and illegal actions. The problem of how drones can be detected and controlled over a limited area is directly rising up. Radar sensors are suitable to detect big objects, but drones may also be seen.

 

GEO-K takes part to the study for super-classification of multispectral data

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GEO-K participates to the study for the super-classification of Landsat Multispectral products. The study will be published on the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observation and Remote Sensing in the next period.

What is super-classification?

With it, we consider the ability to discriminate the different “materials” that form a single pixel signal. Often these materials are different and composite on the Earth’s surface. With this approach, we can ultimately increase the capability of satellite instruments in terms of spatial resolution.

The methodology proposed by GEO-K and the Earth Observation Laboratory of the University of Rome Tor Vergata is based on advanced techniques exploiting Neural Networks.

The first results obtained by the team were presented at the URBAN 2015 Remote Sensing Joint Event in Losanna, Switzerland.

URBANFLUXES at Rome 2015 Science Symposium on Climate

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GEO-K took part at the Rome 2015 Science Symposium on Climate poster session, on November 19-20, with a contribution to URBANFLUXES project.

The recently launched Horizon 2020 project URBANFLUXES investigates the potential of EO to retrieve urban energy budget components, focusing on the anthropogenic heat flux. The main challenge of this project is the innovative exploitation of the Copernicus Sentinels synergistic observations to estimate local scale spatio-temporal patterns of the anthropogenic heat emission in cities. These EO-based spatially disaggregated estimations contain valuable information for both the urban planning and the Earth System Science community.

 

GEO-K StormTrek at 2015 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference

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“The number of the extreme meteorological events has increased in the last few years and the trend should be the same for the next future”.

GEO-K participated in the 2015 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference, held in Toulouse, France, 21-25 September, presenting StormTrek, the innovative algorithm for the nowcasting of extreme meteorological events.

“These events generally develop very quickly and on a small scale, nevertheless they may provoke several damages and affect also the human’s safety. For these reasons it is very important to monitor and prevent these natural hazards by means of advanced techniques which must be able to:
● detect the event as soon as possible
● track the behavior of the event
● predict the short term development of the event

StormTrek is a novel multispectral algorithm for the detection, the tracking and the short term forecast of convective objects developed by GEO-K.
The model is already operational and some web services based on its output are already available. Our work is aimed to show the results of the validation activity developed in the last year. StormTrek validation involves the comparison with benchmarks like the Rapid Development Thunderstorms, developed by Meteo France, and the lightning activity over Europe and South Africa”.

Here is the link to the presentation.

Urban Imagery for thermal behavior of cities at JURSE 2015

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Earth Observation (EO) systems and the advances in remote sensing technology increase the opportunities for monitoring the thermal behavior of cities.
Several parameters related to the urban climate can be quantified from EO data products, providing valuable support for advanced urban studies and urban climate modeling.
The study has been presented at the last JURSE congress in Lausanne. In this study, remote sensing techniques are applied to derive quantitative information necessary to identify possible zones with homogeneous thermal characteristics (Local Climate Zones LCZ).

Parameters like the pervious and impervious surface fraction, the surface albedo, the building density, the mean building/tree height, and the sky view factor are quantified for a study area in Crete, Greece. The EO products are then used under a methodological framework to map the LCZ.

Individual EO products, as well as the LCZ classification itself, is useful to urban climate modeling and studies to assist in planning and decision making.

Future research includes the investigation of more urban parameters extraction with EO data, with the ultimate goal of developing a methodology adaptable to the Sentinels.

University of Rome Tor Vergata is the only Italian University in the QS Top 50 Under 50

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Over the years, the University of Tor Vergata has continually improved its position in the international rankings: in the recently published QS World University Top 50 Under 50 2014 ranking (less than 50 years old universities), Tor Vergata risen yet again advancing by 5 positions, more precisely from 38th to 33rd in the world. This result is even more significant considering that it is the only Italian university present in this ranking.

The position is established after considering 6 indicators: the academic reputation, the number of quotes, the level of preparation of the students, the quality of the teaching and international activities, and the employment opportunities.

According to the QS research, 20% of the best young universities in the world are in Australia that accounts for the highest number of universities among all 25 countries present in the ranking, followed by Spain with 5. Hong Kong and the United Kingdom have 4, whilst Germany has 3. Korea, Canada, Sweden and the United States of America all have 2.

GEO-K won the Best Ideas challenge at the GMES Masters Competition 2012

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GEO-K and SERCO prized at the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Masters competition (GMES MASTERS 2012). GEO-K and SERCO won the “Ideas Challenge” competition proposing  “MOSP-RIOS – OFF-SHORE OIL SPILL & FLARING MONITORING”, a service for the monitoring of gas flaring and of oil spilling from off-shore platforms using GMES products.

The competition, in its second year, received more than 100 innovative business proposals from 20 European countries. The 2012 winners were announced at the event, in Munich, organized by Anwendungszentrum Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO) GmbH, on 25 October 2012.