Two European satellites to protect us all

Satellites do much more than to offer us astonishing photographs of space. Some of them, like the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites, save lives. This ESA’s mission monitors the Earth day and night: it has witnessed the birth of a gigantic iceberg, helped locating the seismic fault in a Sea earthquake; or monitored glaciers in the Alps to help us understand how landslides work and helping us fight against disasters. It also provides access to remote areas, where we can’t place sensors. And the microwave radar imaging technology on board of Sentinel-1 allows scientists to have a peek of the ground through the clouds, even on the darkest nights.

The Sentinel-1 images not only allow us to have eyes in disasters that occur in remote zones, it gathers a global view of the state of the disaster with a great amount of detail. In its higher definition mode, it provides a 5 meter resolution image. The mission is composed by two satellites, which guarantees a great response speed: at European latitudes it revisits the same area about every three days. This is why this never sleeping sentry is so interesting for our project and why we needed the efforts of our partners from the Remote Sensing Research group of TU Wien. Thanks to them we will be able to incorporate the Sentinel-1 radar images into our system.

All this activity generates up to 3 Terabytes every 24 hours. This is the equivalent of creating 40 high definition movies… each day! Processing all this information can’t be done in a regular laptop. It requires the use of a supercomputer. The Remote Sensing Research group uses a supercomputer—the Vienna Scientific Cluster—to analyse the Sentinel-1 data. Thanks to the computational power of this supercomputer, they are able to compare the latest Sentinel-1 images to all past data, that form a picture of a “normal looking” Earth. This allows them to create change maps that depict flooding, deforestation and other such drastic events.

Credit: ESA

But surprisingly, this daily amount of new information is not the one thing that poses the heaviest toll for computers. Establishing this “normal looking” Earth picture isn’t as easy as it sounds. Just think on the view you have through a window in your home: it changes a lot from spring through winter and from one year to another. What constitutes normal and what is out of line? To account for changes in the terrain, and the different looks that the Earth offers throughout the year, our colleagues at TU Wien are using the data already obtained by the Sentinel-1 in the past 3 years and the data obtained by the ENVISAT satellite, a past mission that went on between 2002 and 2012. Together, they constitute 1000 TB of images, more than 13000 high resolution movies. That’s certainly a lot of Netflix to catch up, so no wonder that a supercomputer is needed for analysing this huge database automatically.

Only a decade ago, this kind of technology seemed like science fiction. Today, we are integrating satellites, supercomputers and many other cyber-technologies to fight against disasters.

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I-REACT celebrates the first in-field demonstration at the Sava River basin

Over the last 5 years, Western Balkans have been severely hit by extreme flooding events. Major floods in 2010, 2013, 2014 and 2015 affected hundreds of thousands of people, causing extensive damage and a high casualty toll.

We chose this region to hold the first demonstration of our disaster management tool. In this way, we wanted to show how it can facilitate the work of authorities and civil protection in the fight against floods, but also highlight how it can aid in the coordination of different countries when a disaster hits more than one nation.

Over the three days of the workshop, the participants worked together in a simulated scenario based on the May 2014 historical Sava River flood. This flood killed 79 people, affected 2.6 million people and caused 3.8 million € in damages and losses across the Sava River Basin. The workshop linked the management of these events to the different functionalities of the I-REACT system, showing how technology can play a crucial role in the fight against disasters.

In the in-field demo of I-REACT, participants could test the crowdsourcing functionalities of the mobile app. They also tested different technologies specially devised for first responders: augmented reality glasses to provide them with live information, or a wearable that allows for detailed geolocalization.

The simulation of a control room demonstrated how a great variety of data coming from different sources, and serving different purposes, could be easily visualised by authorities. These easy visualization helps authorities making decisions in the event of an emergency.

Overall, the demo was a success. It highlighted the potential of an integration tool for disaster management, while helping authorities and responders both to save time and make more informed decisions when all variables are at play. Additionally, the I-REACT team gathered important feedback from professionals. Together with the information that we obtained in Paris, this will help us fine-tune the system and facilitate the use and integration of I-REACT within different operational procedures.

The next demonstration of our system will follow to continue bringing I-REACT closer to users and to ultimately improve future response to floods, and other disasters, mitigating their impact and help saving lives.

I-REACT group photo

The workshop was organised thanks to the support of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe in collaboration with the Sava River Basin Commission and other technical partners such as Deltares, the Royal Haskoning DHV from the Netherlands, the CIMA Research Foundation and ISMB (Instituto Superiore Mario Boella) from Italy.

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I-REACT successfully completes the first half of the project

After 18 months of hard work the I-REACT team gathered in Torino to attend the Mid-Term review meeting and show for the first time a fully functional system ready to be tested in the management of disasters.

At the meeting, the I-REACT partners demonstrated that most of the work in data integration and modelling as well as in the construction of the big data architecture is nearly completed and remains be fine-tuned in the coming months. The same is true for the different technologies that will be provided to end-users, including the I-REACT web interface, the smart glasses or the mobile app.

All these technologies were tested in a practical demonstration were the team was split in 3 groups acting as first responders, citizens and decision makers. This way, the main crowdsourcing functionalities were tested including the in-field reporting through the mobile app, the validation of reports and sending of warnings from the control room or the social media analysis were tested.

After this small test, the work with end-users is starting as part of the demonstration and validation activities that aim to bring the I-REACT system closer to real-case scenarios. Five demonstrations are planned during the next 18 months, the first of which will be held in Zagreb on December 6th/8th together with the Sava River Commission to demonstrate the potential of I-REACT in the management of floods.

Finally, at the meeting the initial work in the exploitation of the project was presented with different business strategies to bring I-REACT to the market for the public and private sector. In addition, the communication and dissemination strategy showed to be succeeding in building of an important stakeholder community around the project.

Overall, EU Commission representative and two external reviewers assessed the activities and confirmed the high performance of I-REACT. Next week, I-REACT will pass another important test with the first end-user demonstration on its way towards generating the most efficient tool for disaster management in Europe.

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