Terra SeiSmic earThquake predicTion - Genova Smart Week

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Mag/Giu 2020 anno XXIV N°3

EO, VGI AND AI FOR LAND MANAGEMENT

DISASTER RISK REDUCTION WITH EARTH OBSERVATION

MONITORING ZNOSKO GLACIER

Terra SeiSmic earThquake predicTion

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The “everything digital” geospatial environment

This issue, mainly edited in English for the annual fair of INTERGEO, is facing, for the first time, the international Geo-IT community in a digital meeting!

INTERGEO organizers says that exhibitors will meet international trade fair visitors, speakers will meet their audience, and everything will be as usual. But we all know that things will not be as usual and we hope that in the very next future the industrial economy of the Geospatial

community will run again, but surely in a different way. In this “everything digital” environment, GEOmedia decided not to change producing a print publication. Why? Because our readers still want it. Especially in this period were the pleasure of getting away from the screens and continue enjoy geospatial information on a print paper is really a great opportunity. But how are going other similar publications in the world? Many

decided to stop printing, mainly because of paper press process cost, but many other not. One for all is an example for all of us, and we want to share with you the answer of Neil Sandlers to the why xyHT is still a print magazine: “Yes, we are, and for some very good reasons. You, our readers, still demand print. Our numbers show that 19,870 of you are holding a print version of this issue in

your hands, and 10,912 of you are looking at a digital edition on your phones or computers”.Our numbers are not the same, we are in Italy not in USA, and our magazine is mainly in Italian

language, but the ratio looks the same.

Our first focus this issue is on Earthquake prediction with the article by Oleg Elshin of Terra Seismic, an international team of scientists with over 30 years of experience in developing

effective technologies & methods in seismic forecasting. Oleg explain us that Terra Seismic can predict most major earthquakes (M6.2 or greater) at least 2 - 5 months before they will strike, based on determinations of the stressed areas that will start to behave abnormally before major

earthquakes. The second focus approach the fusion of Earth Observation, Volunteered Geographic

Information and Artificial Intelligence for improved Land Management in an article by Vyron Antoniou and Flavio Lupia.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the worldwide economic crisis and the general slow-down of space activities, the temperature is high about the NASA Artemis program, meant to land in 2024 again on the Moon. The report of Marco Lisi “Positioning, Navigation and Timing for

Planetary Exploration and Colonization: to the Moon and Beyond” heralds the presence of a lot of geomatics in next years.

Vincenzo Massimi on the article “Disaster risk reduction and reconstruction in Indonesia with Earth Observation” report how Indra and Planetek Italia contributed with a batch of EO-based

services, for terrain deformation mapping before and after the 7.5 magnitude earthquake of September 28, 2018 in the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Gabriele Garnero, in the report “Control and monitoring of the Znosko Glacier in Antarctica” with Fabian Brondi Rueda, Giovanni Righetti and Stefano Serafini will focus on the generation of correct digital elevation models (DEM) for the monitoring of the glacier observed since the

1990s by Peru’s IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional), demonstrating that a correct geodesic setting allows to obtain high resolution geospatial products.

Enjoy your reading.

Buona lettura,Renzo Carlucci

in ThiS iSSue...

geomediaonl ine . i t

GEOmedia, published bi-monthly, is the Italian magazine for geomatics. Since more than 20 years publishing to open a worldwide window to the Italian market and vice versa.Themes are on latest news, developments and applications in the complex field of earth surface sciences.GEOmedia faces with all activities relating to the acquisition, processing, querying, analysis, presentation, dissemination, management and use of geo-data and geo-information. The magazine covers subjects such as surveying, environment, mapping, GNSS systems, GIS, Earth Observation, Geospatial Data, BIM, UAV and 3D technologies.

In cover image - stressed areas and anomalies map in

Italy on 01.10.2008, six months before 2009 L’Aquila earthquake

COLUMNS

22 SPACE AND EARTH

24 ESA Image

30 AUGMENTED REALITY

40 NEWS

42 AEROFOTOTECA

46 AGENDA

WiTh Terra SeiSmic earThquake

predicTion, We can be beTTer

prepared for

earThquakeS in iTaly by Oleg elshin

6reporT

focuS

fuSing earTh obServaTion, volunTeered

geographic informaTion and arTificial

inTelligence for improved land managemenT

by VyrOn AntOniOu, FlAViO lupiA

10

http://geomediaonline.it

Chief EditorRENZO CARLUCCI, [email protected]

Editorial BoardVyron Antoniou, Fabrizio Bernardini, Mario Caporale, Luigi Colombo, Mattia Crespi, Luigi Di Prinzio, Michele Dussi, Michele Fasolo, Marco Lisi, Flavio Lupia, Beniamino Murgante, Aldo Riggio, Mauro Salvemini, Domenico Santarsiero, Attilio Selvini, Donato Tufillaro

Managing DirectorFULVIO BERNARDINI, [email protected]

Editorial StaffVALERIO CARLUCCI, GIANLUCA PITITTO, [email protected]

Marketing AssistantTATIANA IASILLO, [email protected]

DesignDANIELE CARLUCCI, [email protected]

MediaGEO soc. coop.Via Palestro, 95 00185 RomaTel. 06.64871209 - Fax. [email protected] ISSN 1128-8132Reg. Trib. di Roma N° 243/2003 del 14.05.03

Stampa: System Graphics SrlVia di Torre Santa Anastasia 61 00134 Roma

Paid subscriptionsGEOmedia is available bi-monthly on a subscription basis.The annual subscription rate is € 45. It is possible to subscribe at any time via https://geo4all.it/abbonamento. The cost of one issue is € 9 €, for the previous issue the cost is € 12 €. Prices and conditions may be subject to change.

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Issue closed on: 28/08/2020.

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In the background image, many multicolored curves and handles of the Flinders Mountains - the largest mountain system of southern Australia - appear in this image in false-color captured by the Copernicus Sentinel mission-2.

This image was captured on December 31 2019 from the two-satellite Sentinel-2, who-se goal is to ensure coverageand the distribution of data required by the program Eu-ropean Copernicus. The datawere tried through the selec-tion of spectral bands useful to classify the geological fe-atures. This image also does part of the video program Earth from Space.

poSiTioning, navigaTion and Timing

for planeTary exploraTion and

colonizaTion: To The moon and beyond

by MArcO lisi

16

diSaSTer riSk reducTion and

reconSTrucTion in indoneSia WiTh earTh

obServaTion by VincenzO MAssiMi

26

conTrol and moniToring of The znoSko glacier in anTarcTica

by FAbiAn brOndi ruedA, gAbriele gArnerO, giOVAnni righetti, steFAnO serAFini

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6 GEOmedia n°3-2020

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The traditional response to earthquake-related danger is based on

long-term preparation in areas where major earthquakes were historically recorded. These preparations usually include establishing more resilient building standards for new buildings and reinforcing old heritage. Italy is home to a plethora of invaluable historic buildings that are very vulnera-ble to earthquakes. According to some estimates, only about 25% of Italian buildings are built in accordance with sei-smic standards and only about 40% of current Italian infra-structure is earthquake proof. Akin to many other seismic regions around the world, insurance is not usually used as a tool to obtain earthquake damage relief in Italy. It’s esti-mated that only about one per cent of Italian buildings are in-sured against earthquakes (2). Recent events have again cle-arly demonstrated that the traditional approach provides a little help in preventing human loss, saving historic buildings and mitigating the economic damage produced by earthquakes. For instance, the Italian Civil Protection Agency estimated the economic los-ses from the 2016 October earthquakes at €16.5 billion. The insured loss was just €208 million, which indicates that only 1.3% of the overall econo-mic loss was insured (3). Thus, Italy remains very vulnerable to

Earthquakes have represented a permanent threat to Italy throughout the

country’s entire history: seismic events have been well known since Roman

times. The country also suffered major events in the 20th century. The most

tragic was the 1908 M7.1 Messina earthquake and subsequent tsunami that

almost completely destroyed the cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria,

leaving more than 80,000 victims in its wake. This threat still hangs over the

Italian people. Just within the last decade, the 2009 L’Aquila quake, the 2012

Emilia Romagna quakes and the 2016 Central Italy quakes reminded us that

we live in a dangerous and seismically active period for Italy.

With Terra Seismic earthquake prediction, we can be better

prepared for earthquakes in Italyby Oleg Elshin

Fig 1 - Stressed area in Italy on 01.10.2008, six months before 2009 L’Aquila earthquake."

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GEOmedia n°3-2020 7

culiarity of Italy is that periods of high seismic activity may be interspersed with relatively quiet and prolonged risk-free periods. Italy could establish a special earthquake prepa-redness and recovery fund, which would accumulate funds during quiet seismic periods and spend money effectively just before major earthquakes.Secondly, the scarce resources available for preparedness could be more efficiently al-located across Italian regions. While almost all Italian regions are exposed to earthquake risks, funds could be invested mainly in the region that will be af-fected by a forthcoming major earthquake.

major earthquakes. With this in mind, we need to find new and better solutions to address the danger posed by earthqua-kes in Italy.Fortunately, science and technology progresses, and global earthquake prediction, a radically novel technology, has created new and very pro-mising prospects for mitigating earthquake danger in Italy and globally. Terra Seismic, the world’s first company of its kind, has successfully develo-ped satellite Big Data techno-logy that can predict most major earthquakes (M6.2+ or greater) at least 2-5 months before they will occur. The technology has been in practi-cal use since 2013. Terra Seismic’s unpa-ralleled technology has been successfully tested against histo-rical data for global and Italian quakes that have occurred in the last 50 years. Backward testing shows that the technology would have successfully de-tected all major M6+ Italian earthquakes since 1980.Global earthquake prediction is based on simple and uni-versally understan-dable assumptions. While earthquakes occur suddenly for humans, these perils are not sudden for nature. Nature needs time to accumulate a huge amount of stress before pro-ducing a major earthquake. The area where the future earthquake will hit will be stressed and

behave differently from other areas in the vicinity. These are-as of abnormal behavior can be detected well in advance and this gives humans a warning period to prepare effectively for forthcoming major earthqua-kes.Italians know that earthquakes are a real and permanent dan-ger, but every new event still catches Italy underprepared. With radically new technology and a much better understan-ding of earthquake build-up processes, what can we do dif-ferently now?Firstly, we now know that sei-smic danger is distributed une-venly across time and different Italian regions. A specific pe-

Fig. 2 – Real predictions, stressed are-as and anomalies map: some latest case analysed.


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Thirdly, we need to carefully reanalyze and draw lessons from past Italian events to predict the potential secondary consequences associated with earthquakes. For example, the 2016 Amatrice quake shows that destroyed and damaged roads and bridges may hinder the prompt arrival of rescue teams and heavy rescue machi-nery in the damaged area, and so on.

Fourthly, detailed action plans could be developed before major events to address a re-gion’s specific characteristics. According to these plans, the government would need to examine and reinforce the criti-cal and important infrastructu-re in the area of a forthcoming quake – hospitals, schools, cultural heritage buildings, etc. The rational use of millions of euros on effective loss preven-tion measures before earthqua-kes hit is estimated to save billions that are usually spent on recovery after earthquakes. Thus, thanks to this approach, billions of euros’ worth of eco-nomic damage could be pre-vented in Italian earthquakes and these huge savings alloca-ted to other purposes.Fifthly, besides government funding, private money and, specifically, insurance compa-nies could play a greater role in preparedness and earthquake risk mitigation. Earthquake in-surance penetration is curren-tly very low in Italy. One of the main reasons for this situation is that quake insurance is very expensive due to incorrect qua-ke risk assessment. Earthquake prediction will assess quake risk much more accurately, thus allowing insurers to of-fer much lower premiums for many Italian regions and make insurance coverage more attractive. Innovation will cre-ate conditions for affordable earthquake insurance to pene-trate into the Italian market.Finally, in Italy, building col-lapses are responsible for most deaths during earthquakes. The death toll would be signi-ficantly lower if people were outside and distanced from old buildings when the quake stri-kes. As such, a timely warning for people to simply sleep and spend more time outside buil-

dings before major earthquakes represents a very cheap and effective solution. Training drills and early warning alarms will be effective at preventing significant human loss due to earthquakes. Based on Terra Seismic’s global technology, we can dramatically reduce the human loss arising from these awful perils and better protect Italy. Terra Seismic calls for cooperation with the Italian Central and Regional go-vernments in order to improve preparedness for forthcoming events.

REFERENCES ANDFURTHER READINGS1.Elshin, O. and Tronin, A.A. (2020) Global Earthquake Pre-diction Systems. Open Journal of Earthquake Research, 9, 170-180.https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.075932.Earthquake-resistant buildings: the vulnerability of Italy’s infrastructurehttps://www.webuildvalue.com/en/infrastructure-news/earth-quake-resistant-buildings.html3.2016 Central Italy earthquakes cost an estimated 208 million euros: PERILShttps://www.canadianunderwriter.ca/claims/2016-central-italy-earthquakes-cost-estimated-208-million-euros-perils-1004122686/#:~:text=The%20Italian%20Civil%20Protection%20Agency,insured%20loss%20of%20the%20Aug.

KEYWORDSGlobal earthquake prediction;Big Data and novel technologies;Earthquakes; Remote sensing;Terra Seismic

ABSTRACTTerra Seismic can predict mostmajor earthquakes (M6.2 or greater)at least 2 - 5 months beforethey will strike.

AUTHOROleg Elshin [email protected] at Terra Seismic Alicante, Spain / Baar, Switzerland

Terra Seismic can predict most major earthquakes (M6.2 or gre-ater) at least 2 - 5 months before

they will strike. Global earthquake prediction is based on determina-tions of the stressed areas that will

start to behave abnormally before major earthquakes. The size of the

observed stressed areas roughly corresponds to estimates calcula-ted from Dobrovolsky’s formula.

To identify abnormalities and make predictions, Terra Seismic applies various methodologies,

including satellite remote sensing methods and data from ground-based instruments. We currently process terabytes of information daily, and use more than 80 dif-

ferent multiparameter prediction systems. Alerts are issued if the abnormalities are confirmed by

at least five different systems. We observed that geophysical patterns

of earthquake development and stress accumulation are generally

the same for all key seismic re-gions. Thus, the same earthquake

prediction methodologies and systems can be applied successfully

worldwide. Our technology has been used to retrospectively test data gathered since 1970 and it

successfully detected about 90 per-cent of all significant quakes over

the last 50 years.

www.terraseismic.org

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AMBIENTEARCHEOLOGIAARCHITETTURAINFRASTRUTTUREREALTA’ VIRTUALE

Via Balilla 192Canosa di Puglia (BT) 76012

tel. 0883 887466 mob. +39 347 4810454

[email protected]

http://archimeter.it

mailto:[email protected]


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Existing and future develop-ments in Earth ObservationThe last few years we have wit-nessed a proliferation of Earth Observation (EO) systems with improved sensing capabilities and shorter revisiting periods. Perhaps one of the most suc-cessful paradigms of freely avai-lable EO data is those provided by the European Commission (EC) Copernicus program through the Sentinel constella-tion. However, broad EO data availability was unknown until

recently. At the beginning, high resolution imagery was a sole privilege of governments or robust private companies, while later, broadly available imagery was of medium re-solution and long revisiting times (e.g. through the Landsat program). Today though, ini-tiatives like Sentinel provide free imagery of up to 10m resolution and of 5-day revisi-ting period. Taking advantage of these developments, many stakeholders turn to the pu-

Earth Observation data deluge is

calling for Artificial Intelligence

methods to support geomatics in

producing valuable information

for land management.

Open-source data, software

and services and volunteered

geographic information will be

relevant contributors.

Fusing Earth Observation, Volunteered

Geographic Information and Artificial

Intelligence for improved Land Management

by Vyron Antoniou, Flavio Lupia

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Fig. 1 - An example of artificial neural network with a hidden layer (Source: https://commons.wikime-dia.org/wiki/File:Artificial_neural_network.svg)

mes, in or outside Data Cubes, still remains a challenge. To this end, an interesting deve-lopment comes from advan-ces in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL). Important breakthroughs that took place during the last few years have contributed to their proliferation. First, it is the improvements of the AI/ML/DL field itself. New algo-rithms, improved models and better processes allow AI/ML/DL to excel in long standing problems and challenges com-pared to existing solutions and show the potential of the field in the future. A second factor is the open approach that many stakeholders hold towards AI issues. Partially from concerns that have to do with the power and the control that AI models can have over important de-cisions and partially inspired by the principles set by open-source software and wiki-based projects, AI models, training datasets and other helpful ma-terial are freely accessible onli-

blicly available data to cover their needs as high quality and timely imagery is easily accessible from individuals and researchers up to start-up companies. As a consequence, the private sector today needs to offer imagery well below the thresholds set by freely avai-lable data pushing the space-based EO in a virtuous cycle. A similar positive momentum exists for the global co-ordina-tion of EO sensors. Examples can be found in initiatives such as the GEO (Group on Earth Observations), an internatio-nal organization consisting of more than 200 governments and organizations. Its mis-sion is to implement GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) which is a set of interacting earth observation, information and processing systems aiming to provide access to information to a broad range of users and purposes. GEOSS links these systems, facilitates the sharing of environmental data and in-formation, ensures that these data are accessible and assures their quality, provenance and interoperability. More than 150 data providers contribute to GEOSS and in total, there are around 200 million datasets available. A direct result of the-se developments is the creation of huge volumes of data, on top of the already produced ones. It is expected that more than 8500 smallsats (i.e., less than 500 Kg) will be launched in the next decade alone, at an average of more than 800 satel-lites per year, and the constel-lations will account for 83% of the satellites to be launched by 2028 (Euroconsult, 2019), many of which will be for EO purposes.

New Challenges – New SolutionsAll these create new challenges when it comes to efficiently storing, managing, processing and analysing EO imagery. Moreover, there is increased need for automation and end-to-end methodologies for image analysis in order to take advantage of the wealth of data generated. An interesting way forward is paved by the pro-gress in satellite imagery Data Cubes. Data Cubes are novel approaches for storing, orga-nizing, viewing and analyzing large volumes of imagery and thus, enable more efficient management and analysis methods. They allow a homo-genized way of storing time-repeating imagery for a defined area. This creates a virtual cube of data over a specific area where the z-axis corresponds to time. Data Cubes ensure high quality and consistency of the stored data while they provide the necessary infrastructure, tools and services. However, processing of large data volu-


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ne which lower the entry bar of an individual to this field. Moreover, big companies offer for free the necessary compu-tational power so that anyone can experiment and progress into the AI domain (see for example Google’s Colab - https://colab.research.google.com/).

Machine Learning in GeomaticsIn general, ML/DL is revo-lutionizing how massive data volumes are analysed. In the Geomatics domain, ML/DL allows the development of geospatial applications that, a few years ago, were beyond reach in terms of efficiency and processing capacity. Examples can be found in satellite image artefact reduction (Wegner et al., 2018); image denoising (Huang et al., 2019); pan-sharpening (Yang et al., 2017) or super resolution (Huang et al., 2015) to name a few. Of course, the ML/DL field is not without challenges. One of

the most puzzling ones is the stability of the results. Gilmer et al. (2018) illuminates the problem and explains how easy it is for deep neural networks (DNN), which are highly ac-curate on benchmark datasets, to be confused and perform poorly when they have to work with real-life adversarial cases. For example, Hendrycks et al. (2019) show that with a set of adversarial images a DNN achieved an accuracy of ap-proximately 2%, which was a drop of approximately 90% compared to its accuracy with the benchmark IMAGENET dataset. However, ML/DL is constantly gaining momentum and the user and developer pool is getting bigger and more active in all domains, including Geomatics. This trend is also seconded by multiple virtual places where engineers meet and compete to produce novel or more efficient AI models. For example, the Kaggle plat-form (https://www.kaggle.com/) hosts open competitions

that challenge researchers and developers to present models that are capable of accurately evaluating benchmark datasets. Similar is the concept behind the DigitalGlobe challenge (https://spacenetchallenge.github.io/) which focus exclusively in remote sensing application, the Crowd AI mapping challenge (https://www.crowdai.org/challenges/mapping-challenge) which focuses on building detection for humanitarian response in areas with poor mapping cove-rage, and the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) challenge, which focus on natural or manmade fea-tures, such as waterways and buildings from multispectral satellite imagery.

Volunteered Geographic Information in the service of Machine LearningOne important factor that affects the progress of ML/DL is the availability of trai-ning datasets. In Geomatics, the solution can be found in the growth of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI). For more than a deca-de now, VGI is spearheading the creation of freely available data. OSM, the flagship of VGI, provides global coverage with free data where someone can find vectors that outline natural and man-made features including land use and land cover data. The geometry of the features, along with their imagery counterpart, can form rich sources of training datasets that can be used to train ML/DL models in order to perform complex processes such as au-tomatic road network extrac-tion, object detection or land classification (Antoniou and Potsiou 2020). Fig. 2 - A filter in the first layer of a convolutional artificial neural network interpreting an image

(Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Convolutional_Neural_Network_Neural-NetworkFilter.gif).

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Agriculture and Earth ObservationIt is widely recognized that EO and geospatial data of high qua-lity, frequency and with wider accessibility can enable and fully support global, regional and country initiatives and regula-tions. New data-driven appro-aches and Big Data Analytics provide unique opportunities to track and monitor human actions toward sustainability as required by Agenda 2030 in a really consistent and comparable manner.At EU level, environmental and agricultural sector will benefit for the deluge of data from EO (e.g. Copernicus Programme) and other sources (in-situ/pro-ximal/ground sensors) helping to support the European Green Deal - the roadmap for addres-sing climate change issues ma-king the EU economy sustainable and the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). CAP is already exploiting Copernicus satellite data to generate several products: land use/land cover and crop type maps, land take, crop condi-tions, soil moisture, high nature value farmland, and landscape fragmentation. In addition, CAP subsidies to farmers will take advantage of the EO data to perform the full monitor of the farmers compliance and to dramatically reduce the sample field checks.In this arena, managing petab-ytes of data from EO and other sources data to be synergistically integrated will be the challenge and new tools, such as AI, will be pivotal in extracting actiona-ble geospatial information. To this end, EU is moving toward the development of cutting-ed-ge, ethical and secure AI trough a coordinated effort and coope-ration among Member States,

as stated by the Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence (European Commission, 2018).

Agriculture and Machine LearningThe growing use of ICT in agri-culture and precision farming have opened up the Digital Agriculture era where a large amount of data coming from a variety of sensors will enable data-driven precise farming stra-tegies. The final goal is always to handle a complex system of systems, where several compo-nents (soil, weather, crops and farm management) interact at different spatial and temporal scales, in search of sustainability of farm inputs and growth of product quality and economic performances.ML/DL techniques have alre-ady been proven as a powerful tool to unravel the complexities of the agricultural ecosystem. Liakos et al. (2018), in their re-view found the following as the most promising applications: crop management (yield estima-tes, diseases and weeds detec-tion, crop quality and identifi-cation), livestock management (animal welfare and produc-tion), water and soil manage-ment. ML/DL models dominate in the field of crop management where there is a consolidated use of imagery that can be used directly, often without the need of data fusion from different sources. ML applications are less common when data recorded from different sensors need to be integrated into big datasets thus, requiring a lot of effort to be managed (e.g. livestock management). Literature re-ports Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) as the most widespread models used in agri-culture. Despite the difficulties to

compare the experimental conditions of the literature, Kamilaris & Prenafeta-Boldú (2018) in their review found that DL-based technics (mainly Convolutional Neural Networks - CNNs) have always better per-formances when compared with classical state-of-the-art approa-ches using EO and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle data in various agricultural areas (leaf classifi-cation, leaf and plant disease detection, plant recognition and fruit counting). Moreover, seve-ral papers reported advantages of DL in terms of reduced effort in feature engineering where manual identification of specific components is always chal-lenging and time consuming. Other advantages are the good performance in generalization and the robustness in difficult conditions (such as illumina-tion, complex background, different resolution, size and orientation of the images).

What lies aheadIn general, ML/DL approaches seem very promising for addres-sing the complexity of the agri-cultural domain by providing the ingredients to move towards a knowledge-based agriculture. In Geomatics, the need for large annotation datasets, as training inputs, can be supported by VGI which offer large volumes of free data. However, at the same time, several weaknesses need to be addressed such as the limitation to generalize beyond the boundaries of benchmark datasets, time-consuming pre-processing and safeguarding the consistency of the results in or-der to further accelerate the use of AI/ML/DL. Finally, we stress the need to orchestrate these promising solutions dealing with specific aspects of agricul-ture within a wider decision-making environment.


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REFERENCESAntoniou, V., & Potsiou, C. (2020). A Deep Learning Method to Accelerate the Disaster Response Process. Remote Sensing, 12(3), 544.Euroconsult, 2019. Smallsat Market to Nearly Qua-druple over Next Decade. Available at http://www.euroconsult-ec.com/5_August_2019European Commission, 2018. Coordinated Plan on Ar-tificial Intelligence. Available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM:2018:795:FINGilmer, J.; Adams, R.P.; Goodfellow, I.; Andersen, D.; Dahl, G.E. Motivating the Rules of the Game for Adversarial Example Research. arXiv 2018, ar-Xiv:1807.06732.Hendrycks, D., Zhao, K., Basart, S., Steinhardt, J., & Song, D. 2019. Natural adversarial examples. arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.07174.Huang, W., Xiao, L., Wei, Z., Liu, H., & Tang, S., 2015. A new pan-sharpening method with deep neural networks. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Let-ters, 12(5), 1037-1041.Huang, Z., Zhang, Y., Li, Q., Li, Z., Zhang, T., Sang, N., & Xiong, S., 2019. Unidirectional variation and deep CNN denoiser priors for simultaneously destriping and denoising optical remote sensing images. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 40(15), 5737-5748.Kamilaris, A., & Prenafeta-Boldú, F. X. (2018). Deep learning in agriculture: A survey. Computers and elec-tronics in agriculture, 147, 70-90.Liakos, K. G., Busato, P., Moshou, D., Pearson, S., & Bochtis, D. (2018). Machine learning in agriculture: A review. Sensors, 18(8), 2674.Wegner, J.D., Roscher, R., Volpi, M. and Veronesi, F., 2018. Foreword to the Special Issue on Machine Learning for Geospatial Data Analysis.Yang, J., Fu, X., Hu, Y., Huang, Y., Ding, X., & Paisley, J., 2017. PanNet: A deep network architecture for pan-sharpening. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (pp. 5449-5457).

KEYWORDSEarth observation; VGI; machine learning;deep learning; digital agriculture, land management

ABSTRACTThe ever-growing availability of Earth Observation (EO) data is demonstrating a wide range of potential applications in the realm of land management. On the other hand, large volumes of data need to be handled and analysed to extract meaningful information and Geomatics coupled with new approaches such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (AI) will play a pivotal role in the years to come. Training datasets need to be developed to use these new models and Volunteered Geographic Information can be one of the promising sources for EO processing. Among the various applications, agriculture may benefit from the large dataset availability and AI processing. However, several issues remain unsolved and further steps should be taken in the near future by researchers and policy makers.

AUTHORVyron AntoniouMulti-National Geospatial Support GroupFrauenberger Str. 250, 53879, Euskirchen,[email protected]

Flavio [email protected] Council for AgriculturalResearch and EconomicsVia Po, 14 00198, Rome, Italy

Il Servizio Pubblico della distribuzionein relazione ai cambiamenti

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Non è una fi era e neppure un convegno, ma una nuova formula di incontro e comunicazione che, pur te-nendo conto delle dinamiche tradizionali, non manca di rispondere a quelle che sono le legittime esigenze delle aziende: far conoscere i propri prodotti e tecnologie suscitando interesse; e quelle dei gestori: essere aggiornati su tutte le novità e tecnologie innovative di un mercato in continuo fermento.

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Il Servizio Pubblico della distribuzionein relazione ai cambiamenti

in collaborazione con

Modelli di prevenzione Piani d’azione Sviluppo sostenibile

Non è una fi era e neppure un convegno, ma una nuova formula di incontro e comunicazione che, pur te-nendo conto delle dinamiche tradizionali, non manca di rispondere a quelle che sono le legittime esigenze delle aziende: far conoscere i propri prodotti e tecnologie suscitando interesse; e quelle dei gestori: essere aggiornati su tutte le novità e tecnologie innovative di un mercato in continuo fermento.

In questo modo chi deve vendere, e chi deve acquistare, si troveranno faccia a faccia in un reciproco scam-bio di opinioni, informazioni, esigenze.

Attraverso la formula dello speech, si potrà assistere ai vari interventi di presentazione anche in maniera di-scontinua, senza l’obbligo di rimanere incollati alla sedia trascurando le indispensabili pubbliche relazioni che sono il vero focus di ogni incontro.

28 e 29 OTTOBREPresso Piave Servizi - Codognè (TV)

Per programma & iscrizioni

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Organizzato da

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ASSOCIAZIONE REGIONALE CONSORZI GESTIONEE TUTELA DEL TERRITORIO E ACQUE IRRIGUE

CONSIGLIO DI BACINO BRENTA

L.R. del Veneto n. 17 del 27 aprile 2012

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REPORT

To justify this maintained focus, during a recent press conference, NASA

Administrator Jim Bridenstine said bold aspirations are needed now more than ever, given the coronavirus pandemic: “We need to give people hope, we need to give them something that they can look up to, dream about, something that will in-spire not just the nation but the entire world”. With the Artemis program, NASA plan to collaborate with commercial and international partners to establish a perma-nent “base camp” and a sustai-nable exploration of the Moon by the end of the decade. The ultimate goal is to use what will be learned on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending astronauts to Mars.Challenges ahead are numerous: as a matter of example, studies

performed at ESA and NASA determined that local materials and 3D printing technologies would be the best for construc-ting buildings and other struc-tures, which means no need for transporting resources from the Earth at an astronomical cost. But the problems to be solved for the realization of a stable manned infrastructure on the Moon (a true follow-on of the International Space Station) in-volve much more than just bu-ilding technologies. The Moon “base camp” will have to meet very stringent requirements in terms of operations, logistics, and safety of life. From an architectural viewpoint, the “Moon base” will have to be expandable and “open” to the integration with other systems, hence integrability and expan-dability will be key issues. But first and above all, a permanent base on the Moon will have to

be affordable and sustainable, i.e., its cost will need to be as-sessed over its life-cycle, under a long term technical, economic, and political perspective.The exploration of the Moon with human and robotic mis-sions and its colonization, through the establishment of a permanent base, will require many vital supporting infra-structures, such as communica-tion networks and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.All architectural approaches considered so far by NASA and ESA to develop communica-tions and PNT infrastructures on the Moon can be divided into two main categories:

• Comprehensive, well-structu-red and forward-looking (but costly) architectures, based on constellations of orbiters and relay satellites;

Despite the coronavirus pandemic,

the worldwide economic crisis and

the general slow-down of space

activities, the temperature is high

about the NASA Artemis program,

meant to land in 2024, 52 years after

the last Apollo mission and 20 years

of confinement in low Earth orbit,

human beings on the Moon.

Positioning, Navigation and Timing

for Planetary Exploration and

Colonization: to the Moon and Beyond

by Marco Lisi


REPORT

• “ad hoc”, flexible, expandable architectures, based on a fu-sion of all available resources and commercial technologies.

The second approach looks like a more promising, affordable, and sustainable solution.

A Lunar Communication NetworkThe Moon communication infrastructure shall be able to provide several capabilities, that can be summarized in two main categories: users/applications that need low data rate and very reliable links, and those that require high data rate lin-ks. The first category includes monitoring and control of the base camp systems/payloads and essential audio, video, and file transfer among users. Links for these applications shall have high service availability (for instance 99.99%) also in case of emergencies and (lunar) di-sasters, regardless of Moon pha-ses, Earth position, terrestrial weather conditions, etc. The second category instead inclu-des HTTP surfing, high quality, Audio/Video communications, video streaming, HD television, file sharing, cloud computing, etc. These applications will be provided with a service availabi-lity lower than the first category (for instance 98%).A pragmatic answer to these requirements might consist in a scalable network that relies on terrestrial, wireless technologies, such as 4G and 5G, intending to limit the effort of designing and developing dedicated technologies for the Moon “base camp” (fig. 1).Consequently, the design of the lunar communication network will be mainly devoted to the definition of its cell distribu-tion on the lunar surface. The cell distribution will strongly

depend on the network (perfor-mance, functional, and opera-tional) requirements, the lunar site location, and the selected air interface. Starting from these inputs, a possible strategy for defining the cell distribution is summa-rized in Fig.2 and described as follows. The “Moon Base” re-quirements and the, e.g., 5G air interface definition are inputs for the definition of the link budgets, in particular for the transmitting and the receiving chains, to derive the maximum attainable path loss. At the same time, the base camp location physical and environmental properties are a starting point for the definition of a path loss model, that can be derived through analysis based on the already available information and, in the future, from testing in specific environmental con-ditions. Once that path loss model and link budgets are completed and consolidated, the coverage distribution of a single cell can be determined. The coverage will depend on its location (latitude, longitude, height from the surface), the adopted antennas, and the sur-rounding infrastructure: notice that all these parameters can be elaborated from software

tools and the coverage pattern computed for several positions. This allows deriving a first ite-ration of the cell distribution, and thus of the lunar cellular network, by dovetailing several cells on the selected site and verifying that the total coverage meets the initial requirements.An important component in the Moon Base communication network is the backhauling link with Earth, which allows 5G communication terminals to ac-cess all services in the terrestrial network (e.g. a Skype© call from a Lunar operator inside the habitat with its family on Earth). The backhauling link will be designed to provide an ultra-high data rate and high-availa-

Fig. 2 - Logical steps for the design of the lunar cellular network

Fig. 1 - Modular, Expandable Moon Navigation & Communi-cations Infrastructure


REPORT

bility link. Candidate techno-logies for backhauling are both microwave and optical commu-nications, each of them with advantages and disadvantages in terms of data rates, weather sensitivity, and pointing accura-cy An example of backhauling configuration is the one shown in fig. 3 where orbiters are in stable orbits around the Moon

and relay all the traffic from the Earth directly to Moon ground stations.Alternatively, the backhauling could be realized through a direct link Moon-Earth. A pos-sible configuration is depicted in Fig.4, where 5G stations are wired to optical backhauling stations that communicate di-rectly with Earth.

Positioning, Navigation and Timing on the Moon

Lunar positioningSince 2001, the Aurora space exploration program has led the European activities towards the potential deployment of human bases on Mars and the Moon. Within this framework, two feasibility studies of a re-duced planetary navigation and communications system were performed. Both studies con-cluded that COTS equipment, based on IEEE 802.16 WiMAX standard, could be used to ful-fill the mission requirements for short-range activities (i.e., link distance below 8 km), but long-range activities were not forese-en to be covered only with an infrastructure on the planetary surface. Future 5G technology is expected to overcome these challenges and to provide the necessary coverage, flexibility, and performance required by a permanent base. The 5G standard looks like a promising standard to support communication and positio-ning capabilities for a wide ran-ge of applications, such as mas-sive Internet of Things (IoT), mission-critical control, and enhanced mobile broadband. For this purpose, advanced wireless technologies, such as massive MIMO antennas and wideband millimeter-wave links are foreseen. Similarly to the 4G LTE standard, 5G multi-carrier waveforms will allow the flexible allocation of data, as well as dedicated pilot signals for positioning purposes. These pilot signals can be used to per-form ranging measurements for time-of-arrival (ToA) location methods, and multi-antenna techniques can enable angle-of-arrival (AoA) localization. The 5G networks for the Moon Base mission are designed ac-

Fig. 3 - Example of possible 5G communication network with backhauling to Earth realized using Moon orbiter satellites

Fig. 4 - Example of possible 5G communication network with backhauling to Earth realized throu-gh direct-to-Earth optical link.


REPORT

cording to the requirements for potential manned and robotic activities. The main design parameters are the cell site lo-cation, cell coverage, and signal bandwidth. These parameters define the achievable commu-nication and positioning capa-bilities. The configuration of multiple cell sites over a certain area, i.e., the geometry of cell sites with respect to the recei-ver, determines the dilution of precision (DOP) of ToA and AoA methods. The cell coverage mainly depends on the height of the cell mast, transmit power, antenna pattern, and propaga-tion conditions. For instance, on the Moon, a cell tower of 10 meters above the surface is re-quired to achieve a line-of-sight (LoS) distance to the horizon of almost 6 km, but this distance may be limited by the irregular topography of the surface. Last, the spectrum allocation of the positioning resources (i.e., pilot signals) determines the ranging accuracy, as well as the data rate. Design procedures develo-ped for 5G terrestrial networks could be adapted to the con-ditions on the Moon. In some situations, the ToA estimates will need to be combined with data from inertial measurement units. Furthermore, in mesh or ad hoc networks, such as devi-ce-to-device (D2D) communi-cations, cooperative positioning between wireless sensors or sites may provide additional location solutions.

Precise synchronization of lunar stations5G systems on Earth rely on GNSS signals for precise syn-chronization. GNSS receivers are used to provide precise timing in different parts of the 4G LTE ground network, which requires within 3 to 10 microseconds accuracy,

depending on the application and the standard adopted. On Earth, such accuracies are easily achievable by a professional GNSS timing receiver, which has an accuracy in the order of tens of nanoseconds. This same approach could be adopted for Moon-based 5G gateway sta-tions. Clearly, on the Moon, the conditions are significantly different with respect to the Earth surface. The use of GNSS (such as GPS or Galileo) signals in the Moon environment has been studied in past ESA con-tracts. The major challenges to be considered are:

• Signal power: in addition to the higher free-space loss, the majority of the received signals come from the GNSS transmitter antennas’ side-lobes (with considerably lower gains). Additionally, stronger signals may interfere with the correct acquisition and tra-cking of weaker signals (near-far effect), with a consequent impact on receiver sensitivity and robustness;

• Dynamics: high ranges for Doppler and Doppler rates

hinder acquisition and im-pose additional stress on the tracking loops, also making it more difficult to process weak signals;

• Geometry: the geometry of the usable satellites is conside-rably worse than for terrestrial applications. Additionally, occultation by the Earth and Moon and receiver sensitivity (minimum C/N0 required to acquire and track GNSS signals) may also have an im-pact on the dilution of preci-sion (DOP).

The studies however showed that GNSS could be used for MTO (Moon transfer orbit), LLO (Lunar Low Orbit), D&L (Lunar Descent and Landing) and, with strong limitations, for Lunar Surface real-time positio-ning.The accurate synchronization of the 5G base stations on the Moon surface can be achieved using a professional high sen-sitivity timing GNSS receiver equipped with a directional high gain antenna (fig. 5), kept pointing to the Earth. The receiver will be configured in timing mode, i.e., it will

Fig. 5 - GNSS space antenna developed for GEO orbit.


REPORT

compute only a precise time solution, by assuming a preci-se knowledge of the antenna location (better, of its phase-center), assessed at least once through non-GNSS methods. Such information can be kept in the receiver, which will then only work as a timing receiver. The need for long coherent integration and the high dyna-mics, as well as the need for a reliable back-up, will suggest the use of miniaturized atomic clocks to avoid degradation of the performances during the integration (COTS miniaturi-zed atomic clocks are already available in the market and currently used in professional ground equipment).

ConclusionThe exploration of the Moon with human and robotic mis-sions and its colonization, through the establishment of permanent bases, will require planetary communications and navigation infrastructures. An affordable, no-nonsense approach might rely on the use of COTS components, presently deployed on Earth in LTE and 5G networks, for communication and naviga-tion on the Moon surface. This approach largely satisfies the requirements of perfor-mance, reliability, affordability, and sustainability, as based on commercial technology and being incrementally expanda-ble over time.

ABSTRACTWith the Artemis program, NASA plans to collaborate with commercial and interna-tional partners to land in 2024 human be-ings on the Moon and then to establish a permanent “base camp” by the end of the decade. Challenges ahead are numerous: the Moon “base camp” will have to meet very strin-gent requirements in terms of operations, logistics, and safety of life; moreover, a per-manent base on the Moon will have to be affordable and sustainable, i.e., its cost will need to be assessed over its life-cycle, under a long term technical, economic, and political perspective.The exploration of the Moon with human and robotic missions and its colonization, through the establishment of a permanent base, will require many vital supporting infrastructures, such as communication networks and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.

KEY WORDSPositioning; navigation; timing; GNSS; Moon; infrastructure; network; com-munication; IoT; 5G

AUTHORDr. Ing. Marco [email protected] ConsultantAerospace & Defence

http://g3wsuite.it



REPORT

http://3dtarget.it



SPACE AND EARTH

In the middle of the worldwi-de Coronavirus pandemic,

after nine years from the Space Shuttle Atlantis's final flight on July 2021, US astronauts reach space with a national, commer-cial space vehicle.May 30, 2020, a historic day for the US and Space explora-tion at large: a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the com-

pany's Crew Dragon space-craft is launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard (fig. 1).For the first time in history and after nine years from the Space Shuttle Atlantis's final flight on July 2021 (thirteen years from the Columbia’s

tragedy in 2003), NASA astro-nauts have launched from American soil in a commercial-ly built and operated American crew spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. The day after, May 31, the Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavour, successfully docked with the International Space Station, bringing the com-pany’s first crew to the only mankind’s orbiting outpost (fig. 2).The Crew Dragon’s docking validated one of the most in-novative features of SpaceX’s vehicle: its automated docking system. The capsule is designed to autonomously approach the ISS and latch on to a docking port, based on a standardized interface, needing no interven-tion from its human passen-gers.The Crew Dragon mission success is at the same time a reason for hope in the future of Space exploration, in par-ticular, the planned mission to the Moon, and, which is even more important, a con-firmation of the effectiveness of the NewSpace paradigm. As pointed out by the Washington Post web site (June 22, 2020): “the contract that resulted in the Dragon crewed spacecraft was issued by NASA in 2014. Six years and $3 billion later, it has flown astronauts into orbit. What SpaceX did was show that a well-led entrepreneurial team can achieve results that were previously thought to require the efforts of superpo-wers, and in a small fraction of the time and cost, and even — as demonstrated by its reusable Falcon launch vehicles — do things deemed impossible alto-gether. This is a revolution.”.Crew Dragon belongs to the Dragon 2 class of reusable

May 30, 2020: US astronauts reach space with a national, commercial space vehicleby Marco Lisi

Fig. 1 - SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, ready for launch


SPACE AND EARTH

Fig. 3 - Crew Dragon physical dimensions

Fig. 2 - SpaceX Crew Dragon automated docking with the ISS.

spacecraft developed and manufactured by American aerospace manufacturer SpaceX. Dragon 2 includes two versions: Crew Dragon (fig. 3), a capsule qualified for manned missions, ca-pable of carrying up to se-ven to 7 passengers to and from Low Earth Orbit, and Cargo Dragon, a robotic vehicle that can bring more than 3,000 kilograms to the ISS.The per-seat cost that NASA will pay for SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule is around $55 million, to be compared with the about $86 million currently paid for each seat aboard Russia's three-person Soyuz spacecraft, which has been astronauts' only ride to and from the ISS since NASA's space shuttle fleet was grounded in July 2011. With the first commercial orbital flight with crew on board, and if the per-seat price is further reduced, another dream of NewSpace might realize: that of commercial space tourism. As a matter of fact, SpaceX and Space Adventures have already si-gned a deal to launch up to four passengers into Earth orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft by 2021.

AuthorDr. Ing. Marco [email protected] Independent ConsultantAerospace & Defence

24 GEOmedia n°1/2-2020

MERCATO

GEOmedia n°1/2-2020 25

NEWS

ESA - Gulf of Kutch, IndiaSeptember 06 2020

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the Gulf of Kutch – also known as the Gulf of Kachchh – an inlet of the

Arabian Sea, along the west coast of India. The Gulf of Kutch divides the Kutch and the Kathiawar peninsula regions in the state of Gujarat. Reaching

eastward for around 150 km, the gulf varies in width from approximately 15 to 65 km. The area is renowned for extreme daily tides which often cover the lower lying areas – comprising networks of creeks, wetlands and alluvial tidal flats in the interior region.

Gujarat is the largest salt producing state in India. Some of the white rectangles dotted around the image are salt evaporation ponds which are often found in major salt-producing areas.

The arid climate in the region favours the evaporation of water from the salt ponds. Just north of the area pictured here, lies the Great Rann of Kutch, a seasonal salt marsh located in the Thar desert. The Rann is considered the largest salt desert in the world. The Gulf of Kutch has several ports including Okha (at the entrance of the gulf), Mandvi, Bedi, and Kandla. Kandla, visible on

the northern peninsula in the left of the image, is one of the largest ports in India by volume of cargo handled. The gulf is rich in marine biodiversity. Part of the southern coast of the Gulf of Kutch was

declared Marine Sanctuary and Marine National Park in 1980 and 1982 respectively – the first marine conservatory established in India. The park covers an area of around 270 sq km, from Okha

in the south (not visible) to Jodiya. There are hundreds of species of coral in the park, as well as algae, sponges and mangroves.

Copernicus Sentinel-2 is a two-satellite mission. Each satellite carries a high-resolution cam-era that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. The mission’s frequent revisits over

the same area and high spatial resolution allow changes in water bodies to be closely monitored.

This image was acquired on 4 April 2020.

Credits: European Space Agency


REPORT

On September 28, 2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the

island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The epicentre was the provincial

capital of Palu, located on a bay on the island’s northwest

coast. The quake triggered a tsunami that swept 10-meter tall

waves of seawater and swamped the city. The combination

of the earthquake, tsunami, soil liquefaction and landslides

claimed well over 2000 lives, destroyed homes, buildings,

infrastructures and farmland in several districts.

Recognizing the need to relocate settlements from the

liquefaction-prone areas, the Indonesian government

developed the Master Plan for Recovery and Reconstruction for

Central Sulawesi through the EARR and SWIP projects.

Disaster risk reduction and reconstruction in Indonesia with Earth Observationby Vincenzo Massimi

Indra and Planetek Italia contributed to the imple-mentation of this plan with a

batch of EO-based services. The main information provided was related to terrain deformation mapping (before the earthqua-ke) followed by the update of terrain information mapping (in the months immediately after the earthquake) and recon-struction monitoring with Very High Resolution images. The collaboration went on with a capacity-building workshop and a knowledge transfer activity held in Jakarta in June 2019 regarding the technical aspects of the delive-red products and training sessions for local users to teach them to use the Geohazards Exploitation Platform (GEP) of ESA. The main purpose of the delivery of the information products was to help the local authorities better understand the hazards associated with seismic activity, flooding and landslides, so they can make more informed decisions in elaborating a redevelopment master plan. As noted during the workshop, the terrain deformation maps are helping the authorities in the evaluation of the effects caused by the disaster on the land surface stability.These activities were carri-ed out in the context of the European Space Agency funded project EO4SD DRR (EO for Sustainable Development – Disaster Risk Reduction). The project was led by Indra, with

Fig. 1 – Sulawesi Earthquake (Credits EU Civil Protection)


REPORT

Planetek Italia, ZAMG, BRGM, Gisat, Argans and Nazka as sub-contractors. All activites were carried out in cooperation with the Asian Development Bank and the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space and invol-ved representatives from nume-rous Indonesian institutions.Supporting the disaster risk ma-nagement over the area affected by the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake with PS InSAR analysisPlanetek Italia provided the mil-limetric measurements derived from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) through the Persistent Scatterers Interferometry (PSI) technique. The PSI technique exploits the SAR satellite images to generate as output the ground motion maps related to the pe-riods before and after the event of 2018.Two different pre and post event maps have been delivered through the extremely intuitive Business Intelligence visuali-zation tools of the Rheticus® platform, to support the decision makers that are involved in the reconstruction activities in Palu. Rheticus® is a geospatial platform for massive Earth observation data processing owned and opera-ted by Planetek Italia. The two delivered maps are the “ground motion” map and the “buildings motion” map, and are described in the following. 1) The pre- and post-earthqua-ke ground motion maps have been delivered over wide spatial areas covering the liquefaction and landslides areas. The map provides the movements – even as small as few millimeters – of each measured point (Persistent Scatterers / Distributed Scatterers) located on buildings and infrastructure elements in the urban and peri-urban zones as shown in figure 3:For each measured point (PS/

DS), the web interface provides a pop-up window (figure 4) that shows the displacement detailed information. 2) The “building motion” map provides the level of concern on each monitored element such as buildings, roads and other infra-structures on a monthly basis, based on the ground motion map (see figure 5). The map integra-tes the ground/building motion measurements described above with the VHR images to monitor the reconstruction stages. Doing so, the Rheticus® platform deli-vered regular monitoring of the reconstruction status based on the Very-High Resolution optical satellite images and the classes of

motion of each single monitored element (e.g. buildings) based on the measurements of displace-ment of the monitored elements itself and their nearby areas. The integrated information has been delivered over the Palu area al-lowing the characterization of the movements of the wide areas and of each single building based on the PSI ground motion map and to retrieve the reconstruction and rehabilitation statistics based on the interpretation of the VHR satellite images.In addition to these informa-tion products, the project also included a week-long course in Jakarta organised by the Asian Development Bank and the

Fig. 2 - Palu, Indonesia. Map of the ground motion during the six months following the event.

Fig. 3 - Ground motion maps in Palu (pre vs post-earthquake 28/09/2018).


REPORT

KEYWORDSearthquake; risk; EO based services; monitoring; rheticus; cloud-computing; automatic processing; data satellite

ABSTRACTOn September 28,2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquakestruckthe island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The epicentre was the provincial capital of Palu, located on a bay on the island’s northwest coast. The quake triggered a tsunami that swept 10-meter tallwavesof seawater and swamped the city. The combination of the earthquake, tsunami, soil liquefaction and landslides claimed well over 2000 lives, destroyed homes, buildings, infrastructuresand farmland in several districts.Recognizing the need to relocate settlements from the liquefaction-prone areas, the Indonesiangovernment developed the Master Plan for Recovery and Reconstruction for Central Sulawesi through the EARR and SWIP projects.Indra and Planetek Italia contributed to the implementation of this plan with a batch of EO-based services. The main informa-tion provided was related toterrain deformation mapping (be-fore the earthquake)followed by the update of terrain information mapping (in the months immediately after the earthquake)and reconstruction monitoring with Very High Resolution images. The collaboration went onwith a capacity-building workshop and aknowledge transfer activity held in Jakarta in June 2019 regarding the technical aspects of the delivered products andtrain-ing sessionsfor local users to teach them to use the Geohazards Exploitation Platform (GEP) of ESA.

AUTHORVincenzo MassimiRheticusTechnicalSpecialistvincenzo.massimi@planetekitalia.itPlanetek Italia Angelo Amodio (Planetek Italia) Angel Utanda, Alberto Alonso (Indra Sistemas), Philippe Bally (ESA), Paolo Manunta (ESA/ADB),Davide Nitti, Raffaele Nutricato (GAP)

Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space. Attended by more than 60 representatives from numerous Indonesian in-stitutions, experts from Indra, Planetek and BRGM explained technical details, methodologies and usage of these satellite data products. Representatives from the Asian Development Bank noted: “Users explained that they are particularly interested in the ground deforma-tion maps – they offer great insight into how the land surface has chan-ged and are essential for Indonesia to redevelop effectively.”The ground motion analysis was performed through the Rheticus® cloud platform, which implements the SPINUA Multi-

Temporal Interferometry algo-rithm for SAR data processing. The SPINUA processing chain is developed by GAP srl, a spi-noff company of Politecnico di Bari, Italy, in order to generate ground motion maps. SPINUA algorithm has been extensively tested and validated in the past 20 years with long stacks of SAR data (acquired in L, C and X bands) with particular attention to research activities aimed at improving the state of the art of SAR techniques. These activities are carried out in collaboration with academic and research institutions. As documented in the scientific literature, SPINUA represents one of the first and effective solutions for multi-

temporal SAR interferometry. SPINUA is based on Persistent Scatterers and Distributed Scatterers Interferometry relying on the identification and monito-ring of single objects (PS) or areas (DS) that remain highly coherent through time.The Rheticus platform is a multi-tenant high level performing cloud-computing platform for the automatic massive proces-sing of long-time series satellite data, retrieved directly thanks to the API connection to the satellite providers (e.g. ESA API Hub Access). The high level of automation along with a dedi-cated detailed logging and alert system allows an easy monitoring of the processing chain status. Rheticus output is also available in Machine to Machine mode (M2M) via standard exchange protocols (e.g. WMS), making the platform an information hub that delivers content to other online systems. Export capabili-ties of data and information are also available, allowing users to download products in standard formats, and facilitating their exploitation in other external ap-plication environments.

Fig. 4 - Example of one PS displacement (mm) over time computed through the PSI over Palu area after the earthquake. In this figure it is possible to see all the geo-analytics and filtering tools for the exploitation of the ground motion map.

Fig. 5 - Palu® reconstruction monitoring service user interface with the integrated reconstruc-tion status and displacement information.


REPORT

BIM PER LE INFRASTRUTTUREReinventa le Infrastructure

Autodesk, the Autodesk logo, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and Revit are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is notresponsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. ©2020 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

▸ Reality Capture e modellazione contestuale

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Autodesk_Adv_A4_infrastructure.indd 1 28/01/20 12:15


To date, the market for inte-ractive visual technologies

is certainly rapidly growing, a decade has passed since the first curves of Hype (The Hype Cycle model is a methodology develo-ped by Gartner, an information technology consultancy, research and analysis firm, to graphically represent the maturity, adop-tion and application of specific technologies.), which described the likely trend of the technolo-gies, at the pioneering and pro-gressive times (Fig. 1).

Undoubtedly confirming what he had described, currently in his Top Ten, concerning upco-ming trends in the technology sector, Gartner outlines an evo-lutionary overview of possible scenarios and includes an inte-resting development that speci-fically characterizes augmented reality. In fact, this technology, today definitely matured from the point of view of hardware and software, is used in many sectors, to induce a sensory overcoming - from this specific point of view, it is possible to make a classifi-cation of contemporary techno-logies covering the following categories:sensory (hearing, vision, perception); (exoskele-tons, prostheses); (implants for the treatment of seizures); gene therapy and cell therapy - expan-ding, improving experiences of a human or physical cognitive nature.Its recent and possible integra-tion with artificial intelligence, also makes it ready for a conside-

rable overcoming of the current limits currently experienced, to project itself towards new intere-sting and sophisticated applica-tion frontiers (Fig. 2). The possible impacts in the production sectors and social life, the possible behavioral re-percussions in daily life or in the business sectors make augmen-ted reality as one of the top 10 technological trends identified by therefore mentioned consul-tancy/analysis for the next 5-10 years.Today, major international pla-yers are aiming for a progressive and growing democratization of AR (AR stands for “augmented reality) technology, simplifying and not only significantly im-proving development and imple-mentation procedures and tools for developers or end users.In fact, we are witnessing the recent phenomenon of the in-tegration of AR systems, also of the "easy to use" type, all within socially well-known applications, (e.g. Instagram, Snapchat) or

XR 2020:

News & Events

by Tiziana Primavera Innovative Tech

Evangelist - AR/VRsenior expert

AUGMENTED REALITY

GARTNER CONFIRMS THE AUGMENTED REALITY

IN THE TOP TEN OF THE MAIN TECHNOLOGICAL

TRENDS, WHILE THE INTERACTIVE HOLOGRAPHIC

VISUALIZATION TECHNIQUE BEGINS TO

EXPERIMENT WITH INNOVATIVE AND INTERESTING

IMPLEMENTATION PROCEDURES.

Fig. 1 – A) Schematization of the Hype Cycle, which characterizes the main stages of evolution of each technology. B) Interesting to observe that in 2009 au-gmented reality began its rise progressively, and was classified as one of those technologies destined to become mainstream over a period of about 5-10 years.


AUGMENTED REALITY

basic applications dedicated to productivity, such as Teamviewer pilot, which, relying on its own relevant global market of about 2 billion installations, has therefore distorted the concept of remote assistance, ensuring a highly pro-gressive image in line with new functional needs.Using SLAM, Simultaneous Localization and Mapping technology, the application al-lows spatial reconstruction of the surrounding environment to allow you to locate the objects placed in it. This allows operators no longer only mirroring video streams, but also the ability to highlight objects and/or supersede indi-cative arrows, to facilitate the understanding of the maintenan-ce procedure for those who are carrying out the assistance work. All this is easy without having special programming skills or re-levant to the sector (Figg. 3-4).But if you turn your attention to the most complex functional scenarios, you can in a custom taylor perspective, witness countless more articulate and complex augmented reality ap-plications, designed to increase safety or productivity in different industries, to improve the ability to make decisions in a reduced time with the help of informa-tion related to the context of use.In fact, there are many AR/VR systems developed internatio-nally in professional fields in the health sectors - with diagnostic imaging it is possible to recon-struct the physiological anatomy of sick organs of a single patient e.g. eyeball / brain / spine etc..), and thanks to the over-imposi-tion of such three-dimensional data in Mixed Reality during the intervention, with an accurate real-virtual collimation, it is possible to proceed with surge-ries with special awareness and operational precision. In some

areas, the surgery is even assi-gned to robotic-guided femto-second lasers, able to recognize the characteristics and be able to proceed to the custom surgery. (surgical optics) - AEC, Cultural Heritage, marketing/ADV or training contexts, just to name a few or to improve learning and considerably improve cognitive

processes in the areas of training and/or training on the job. One aspect that concerns this progressive and utilitarian main-stream adoption is that it inevita-bly has several implications of a not only cultural but also ethical nature.On the other hand, it is clear that research, innovation has

Fig. 2 - Real-time detection, vision systems able to "detect" thefruits and understand the degree of maturity in order to be collected, even in environmental contexts in rather complex and artificial environments.

Figg. 3-4 Land images show the ability to communicate interactively with maintenance staff by marking points of interest or inserting explanatory arrows remotely (Teamviewer pilot).


considerably faster times than governments in legislating in this regard, and international alignment is desirable in order to balance development oppor-tunities and side risks inherently associated with the social intro-duction of each new technology. Sensitive issues recently discus-sed by the CEO of Google in Brussels.

Next-generation interactive holograms open new paths to visual researchAlongside an advanced stage inherent in the Mixed Reality sector, it is interesting at the same time to observe the first steps of extremely innovative research, aimed at pursuing the perceptual increase of rea-lity, thanks to the creation of three-dimensional interactive holograms generated with an innovative calculation procedure, extremely faster and manageable with not particularly powerful hardware. The new algorithms make it pos-sible to significantly reduce the processing of three-dimensional data, paving the way for next-generation augmented reality devices.The academic research team (Takashi Nishitsuji, Tomoyoshi Shimobaba, Takashi Kakue e Tomoyoshi Itoha) found that a complete rendering of 3D polygons for all applications was unnecessary, and focused exclu-sively on the three-dimensional representation of the edges, it was able to significantly reduce the computational load of holo-gram calculations (Holography is an optical technology of storing visual information in the form of a very fine interweaving of interference fringes with the use of coherent, properly projected laser light; the image created by the interference fringes is cha-

racterized by an illusion of three-dimensionality).The method is extremely fast, 56 times faster than conventio-nal algorithms, but above all it significantly lowers the computa-tional load and does not require a responsible graphics processing unit (GPU). Essentially, faster calculations on simpler cores translate into the possibility of using lighter, more compact and, above all, energy-efficient devices, which for these specificities can be used in a wi-der range of applications.It is therefore hypothesized ver-satile heads-up display (HUD) on the windshields of cars/ai-rcraft/ships in support of their driving or new near-eye devices

AUGMENTED REALITY

(NED)capable of transmitting instructions on technical proce-dures.This is a first step in the fron-tier of traditional holographic research to support AR, remi-niscent of the first wireframe export trials of digital artifacts in AR more than a decade ago, but certainly these new techno-logies of classical holography will also evolve and contribute to characterize new perceptual modes of the space around us, which will be permeated by new interpretative semantics or new features, certainly different and broader in its experiential mea-nings from how we have percei-ved it to date.

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REPORT

The Instituto GeográficoNacional activity in AntarcticaThe Instituto Geografico Na-cional, as head of geospatial in-formation in Peru, collaborated with the other participating in-stitutions, providing them tech-nical-cartographic support dur-ing the development of research projects. During this collabora-tion, topographic maps were generated in the areas adjacent to the Machu Picchu Science Station.

The missions covered various scientific aspects, such as:environmental factors regu-

lating the distribution of ben-tonite organisms;sampling of ice coring for the

measurement of environmen-tal isotopes;study of the potential of Ant-

arctic lichens as indicators of climate change;geomorphology and glacial

assessment of Punta Crepín;macro-algae acquisition and

their dehydration.

Since the 1990s, Peru’s IGN (Instituto Geográfico Nacional)

has carried out intensive documentation and monitoring

activities in the Antarctic territories. During the last few years,

these activities have focused on the Znosko glacier.

The importance of this project is based on the generation of

correct digital elevation models (DEM).

In fact, a correct geodesic setting allows to obtain high

resolution geospatial products. These inputs represent the

fundamental support for the study of the glacial mass balance

by institutions such as ANA (Autoridad Nacional del Agua) and

INAIGEN (Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Glaciares y

Ecosistemas de Montaña).

This paper clarifies survey activities carried out so far, analysis

and results achieved, and perspectives for next missions.

Monitoring activities were carried out in an international

cooperation context, involving the Instituto Geográfico

Nacional (PE) and MEDS AMSTERDAM BV Society (NE) under

the scientific supervision of Politecnico di Torino (ITA).

Control and monitoring of the

Znosko Glacier in Antarcticaby Fabian Brondi Rueda, Gabriele Garnero, Giovanni Righetti, Stefano Serafini

Fig. 1 - Location of the area (j=62° 06’ S, l= 58° 28’ W)


REPORT

The ongoing climate changes have pushed research groups, such as ANA and the Servicio Nacional de Meteorología and

Hidrología del Perú; to generate geospatial information on the Znosko glacier.

Znosko GlacierZnosko glacier is located in the southern Shetland Islands, in territories claimed by Argentina, Chile and UK.Located at an average altitude of 22 m above sea level, the ter-rain around the glacier is hilly:

highest nearby point is Admiral Peak, 305 meters above sea level, located 1.3 kilometers south the glacier.This territory is not anthropized, in fact the nearest inhabited lo-cality is the Brazilian station Commandante Ferraz, about 5 kilometers east of the glacier, and the Peruvian station Machu Picchu.

Fig. 3 - Passive geodesic network of the IGN in Antarctica.

Fig. 2 - The environmentof Znosko Glacier.

Area Sup. haZnosko 900Langer 400Wiracocha 1000Monte Flora 200Petrel gigante 135

Tab. 1 – Survey areas and extensions

Gen-19 Feb-20 Difference Displacement

NAME East North

ELEV.

GEOID East North

ELEV.

GEOID East North

ELEV.

GEOID DIST. DIREC.

ANTAR XXVI 1 423421.479 3116628.701 4.098 423421.485 3116628.684 4.092 -0.006 0.017 0.006 0.018 SE

ANTAR XXVI 2 425890.704 3117550.113 10.061 425890.700 3117550.118 10.102 0.004 -0.005 -0.041 0.006 NW

ANTAR XXVI 3 425656.967 3115914.359 40.038 425656.967 3115914.351 40.032 0.000 0.008 0.006 0.008 S

ANTAR XXVI 4 430017.689 3116142.604 17.882 430017.693 3116142.609 17.898 -0.004 -0.005 -0.016 0.006 NE

ANTAR XXVI 5 431716.898 3116130.278 2.504 431716.882 3116130.282 2.503 0.016 -0.004 0.001 0.016 NE

ANTAR XXVI 6 430628.472 3113947.196 11.212 430628.470 3113947.203 11.213 0.002 -0.007 -0.001 0.007 NW

ANTAR XXVI 7 427494.726 3110835.728 37.729 427494.739 3110835.725 37.734 -0.013 0.003 -0.005 0.013 SE

ANTAR XXVI 8 422688.250 3110417.789 9.988 422688.264 3110417.784 9.981 -0.014 0.005 0.007 0.018 SE

TUM01 423494.774 3113442.19 41.393 423494.698 3113442.2 41.47 0.076 -0.007 -0.077 0.076 NW

Tab. 2 – The IGN passive network


REPORT

Monitoring of the Znosko gla-cier: Missions XXVI and XXVIIMissions XXVI and XXVII were carried out respectively in Janu-ary 2019 and February 2020. They involved, in addition to the Znosko glacier, also other ar-eas subject to photogrammetric survey to create a digital model and orthoimages (Table 1).

Overall stability checkIn the last 2 years, a passive monitoring network has been set up covering 9 points, among which were measured with static geodetic measurements some baselines with observations of

the order of 2.5-3 hours each, useful for evaluating the overall stability of the area and the tec-tonic movements of these plates.Interpretation of data in this table, currently drafted in UTM SIRGAS-ROU98 zone 21E co-ordinates, reveals a significant movement of all points; among these, the TUM01 summit in particular has a translation of over 7 cm in one year only.For example, Italy has a global movement of the order of 3 cm/year in the direction N-NE, which decreases to 2-3 mm/year if assessed with European refer-ences, with different orienta-

tions depending on the tectonic micro-plates.The interest so far aroused by the evidence of these movements suggests rescheduling the execu-tion of the measures for the next five years, in order to evaluate with increased accuracy detected data. Eventually new coordi-nates will be included into the global reference system IGS14.

Glaciers geometries evaluationTo evaluate the geometry of the glacier and therefore estimate the involved volumes, it was consid-ered appropriate to use only the basic data obtained from GNSS measurements in RTK mode.In fact, there are reliability prob-lems, in using autocorrelation of images mostly occupied by ice, and therefore devoid of recog-nizable textures and elements.Altitude profiles with an aver-age wheelbase of around seventy meters were used, these were obtained in the 2019 (Antar XXVI) and 2020 (Antar XXVII) campaigns.Differential corrections were performed, using a pair of points near the detection area, resting on the ASTA reference vertex positioned near the flag-pole of the Machu Picchu base.

Fig. 4 – RTK Survey Antar XXVII - Training set (green dots, 70%) and Test set (red triangles, 30%).

Fig. 5 - Digital model and altimetric contour lines variations between the XXVI and XXVII campaigns.


REPORT

Interpolator model estimating In order to identify the optimal interpolator model based on dis-tribution of points and confor-mation of soil, it was decided to proceed with an estimate of the residues derived from the appli-cation of different interpolating models, based on previous re-search experiences.

A subset of data training (70% of the total) -only for the data-set constituted by RTK points, obtained in February 2020 for a total of 1406- was selected, while the remaining part was considered as a test.

The models used were the fol-lowing:

IDW with exponent 2;Kriging with spherical semi-

variogram;Spline with smoothing of

both the surface and the first derivative, all with a mini-mum number of 12 points. Synthetic results are reported in Table 3.

Fig. 6 - Comparisons between the situations 2019 (A) and 2020 (B).

Fig. 7 - Comparisons between the situations 2019 (A) and 2020 (B) for the NE zone of Figure 6.


REPORT

Based on the evaluated resi-dues, it was preferred to oper-ate using the Kriging algorithm on all available datasets.

Ablation analysis(2020 vs 2019)The altimetric differences es-timation, highlights a discrete variability of the snow sur-face. This variable becomes important if assessed in rela-tion to the short period of time elapsed between the two find-ings (13 months). The ablation is significant on the whole area subject to RTK investigations, with average values in the order of 4-5 meters.Significant area variations were also found.Fig. 6 shows the variation be-tween the ortho-image of the 2019 and 2020 campaigns:In this, the digitization per-formed on the basis of the or-thophoto of the year 2020 (B), is compared with the ortho-photo of the year 2019 (A).This simple analysis highlights the retreat of the ice (the mixed land-ice areas are highlighted with a dotted background).The difference mentioned above, in linear terms, in vari-ous cases reaches hundreds of meters.When considering the uncov-ered terrain, less significant differences are observed, es-pecially when compared with the phenomenon previously described.An interesting detail is easily appreciated in the North-West area (Fig. 7), in this, the limits of the frozen area, (highlighted

by the arrow), show an ad-vance of the surface towards the sea, a sign of an evident spillage phenomenon.This collapse affects a large area with an advancement of

the front of about 70 m.

Future projections This surfaces study, highlights a huge decrease in the ice mass during the year 2020 com-pared to the year 2019, and in the same period a significant process of the transfer into the sea, probable consequence of a glacial collapse.As mentioned above, given the obvious limitations of the DEM models derived from photogrammetry, only the RTK survey was used for mod-el generation.

While representing a robust methodology, going through glaciers by foot with geodesic tools has at least three critical issues:

not adequate for the analysis of large extensions;difficult to repeat due to the

hostility of the surrounding environment;high risk for the safety of the

personnel involved in the ex-ecution of the survey.

The hope is to overcome the limitations and problems men-tioned above in the coming campaigns, through the inte-gration of LiDAR systems to be used in the analysis of larger surfaces.

AcknowledgmentsThe authors thank General de Brigada Fernando PORTILLO ROMERO, Jefe of the Instituto Geográfico Nacional of Peru.

REFERENCESGARNERO, G.; GODONE, D. (2013) Comparisons between different interpolation techniques, The Interna-tional Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XL-5/W3 (ISSN: 2194-9034), Pagg. 139-144 [DOI: 10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-5-W3-139-2013, WOS:000358309600021, SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-84924290459].MOTTA, M.; DIOLAIUTI, G.; VAS-SENA, G.; SMIRAGLIA, C. (2003) Mass balance and Energy balance at Strandline Glacier (Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica): Methods and preliminary results, Proceed-ings of the 4th Meeting on Italian Antarctic Glaciology, Terra Antarctica reports n.8, Editors: Massimo Frezzotti & Valter Maggi, pp. 21-28, Siena.

WEBGRAPHYhttps://www.enea.it/it/seguici/pubblica-zioni/pdf-volumi/2019/xxxiv_spedizione_antartide.pdfhttps://elcomercio.pe/tecnologia/ciencias/comercio-antartida-retroceso-glaciar-znosko-noticia-611907-noticia/https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/climate-change-antarctica-greenland-ice-melt-raised-sea-levels-by-half-inch-in-last-16-years.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/environ-ment/2020/mar/11/polar-ice-caps-melting-six-times-faster-than-in-1990shttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-how-much-ice-antarctica-is-losing-mdash-its-a-lot1/https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/

KEYWORDSAntarctica; survey; geodesic network; geospatial; DEM; glacial mass balance

ABSTRACTThe study and analysis of climate change is a global challenge against which envi-ronmental, but also economic and social changes, will be measured.This memorandum illustrates the recent activities carried out by the IGN Peru in collaboration with European institutions.

AUTHORFabian Brondi [email protected] IGN - Instituto Geográfico Nacional, Lima (PE)

Gabriele [email protected] – Politecnico e Università degli Studi di Torino (ITA)

Giovanni [email protected] [email protected] BV – Hengelo (NL)

IDW Kriging SplineMedia -0.291 -0.135 0.048Varianza 2.530 0.459 0.632Max_Ass 3.032 1.065 5.464

Tab. 3 – Residuals on the different interpolator models.


REPORT

www.esriitalia.it

Blending the Science of Geography and Technology of GIS

ADV Geomedia_21,0x29,7.indd 2 15/09/20 08:48

40 GEOmedia n°1/2-2020

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MAKING AQUACULTURE MORE SUSTAINABLE AND EFFICIENT WITH RHETICUS AQUACULTUREIs there a connection between aquacul-ture, climate change and satellite Earth Observation?Fish and seafood play a significant role in the human diet and represent a very important source of protein. About 20% of the world’s population takes at least 20% of animal protein from fish.According to the FAO, human popula-tion growth is expected to rise fish con-sumption by around 1.2% per year over the next ten years. By 2030, the produc-tion of fish and seafood products is ex-pected to exceed 200 million tons com-pared to the current world catch fishing production of around 90-95 million tons per year. In addition, today about a third of fish resources are exposed to excessive exploitation, and this lead to the definition of the United Nations 2030 Agenda – Goal 14 “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and ma-rine resources”.Aquaculture represents the optimal so-lution to ensure the production of fish and shellfish necessary to meet global needs. However, effective and sustai-nable management of aquaculture sites requires improvement of technologies and production processes. Nonetheless, fish and shellfish farms need to adapt their farming techniques to the envi-ronmental context, the habitat in which animals live. Temperature, chlorophyll and turbidity of marine waters signifi-cantly affect the growth rate and health of animals.Climate changes have led to changes in the sea temperature and in the quanti-ties of phytoplankton, factors that affect the growth rates and mortality of ani-mals and, therefore, the productivity of farms and the quality of products.It is clear that a deeper knowledge of these variables is fundamental for achie-ving an optimized farm management.An extraordinary source of information comes, today, from Earth observation satellites. Their data allow to carefully estimate multiple parameters such as sea temperature, chlorophyll concen-tration (proxy of the presence of phyto-plankton) and water turbidity (proxy of water quality).Over the last 25 years, Planetek Italia has gained great expertise in this field thanks toseveral European Space Agency (ESA) and European Commission research programs, such as “Integrated Coastal

Water Management for MED (ICWM for MED)”, “SAtellite Near Real Time Monitoring Network (SAIMON)” and “Marine-EO” projects, to name the la-test.As part of the European project “User uptake activities Copernicus Marine Environment Service (CMEMS) – Promoting demonstrations of CMEMS downstream services.”, coordinated by Mercator Ocean, Planetek has further-more enhanced Copernicus CMEMS data and services, creating an innovative platform called Rheticus® providing on-demand geoanalytics services specifically designed for Environmental Reporting, Maritime Engineering, as well as fishing and aquaculture activities.All these experiences have contribu-ted to the development of Rheticus® Aquaculture service, specifically desig-ned for the management of mussel far-ming sites. The service was developed by Planetek Italia in partnership with Bluefarm s.r.l. to provide mussel farmers with a weekly digital bulletin of updated information on trends of sea tempera-ture and chlorophyll, on growth rate of molluscs, as well as growth trends compared with past ones. The service also provides an estimate of the optimal harvesting time and expected volume of productions.Thanks to an agreement with the Mediterranean Aquaculture Association (AMA), 23 aquaculture sites distributed along Italian coasts are using Rheticus® Aquaculture to support the operational management of mussel farms. The first results of the initiative were presented in a workshop organized last 20 February 2020 during the Aquafarm fair in Pordenone.The workshop confirmed a great in-terest of farmers to receive constantly updated information, useful for the optimal management of their sites in a typical Industry 4.0 logic suited to the aquaculture sector. Among many emer-ged ideas, there was a growing interest in extending the service to other species such as oysters, which are finding wide-spread use in Italian seas.

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THE NEW FACE OF THE RHETICUS NETWORK ALERT EDITION 2020 IS UP!We are excited to announce the launch of the new Rheticus® Network Alert version, designed to enhance your browsing experience, with brand new tools helping users to prioritize inspection activities.Rheticus® Network Alert is a turnkey vertical web service for the continuous monitoring of instability phenomena affecting pipeline networks (water and sewage) in urban areas, caused by ground displacement. The service helps to highlight problems before they become critical by pointing out locations of concern.The information is updated and delivered to utility companies with extremely intuitive Business Intelligence tools to add dynamic analysis and new features to their planning, management and maintenance activities.The Rheticus® Network Alert 2020 user interface is the result of a design process, which includes the user inter-face experience and the analysis of specific information needs of Rheticus clients around the globe, and notably of multi-utility pipeline maintenance managers.The new tools allow users to Identify scores (segments) with highest likelihood of failure in order to prioritize inspection activities before major events occur.With the new “Inspection Priority Score” tool, each seg-ment of the network has an Inspection Priority Score, ranging between 0 and 1. The greater Inspection Priority Score, the greater level of concern. Through a dynamic window, it is possible to select a particular range of Inspection Priority Score and, consequently, the related segments having a score belonging to the selected range.Further clicking over each segment, a pop-up window

shows all information related to the selected segment:

Segment ID;Address and geographic coordinates (latitude, longi-

tude);Segment Status;Velocity (mm/year);Acceleration (mm/year2);Distance of the critical PS2 from the segment (m);Inspection Priority Score.

Finally, in order to get all the information in more details, the new Rheticus® Network Alert edition also offers a de-tailed report that is available on the table at the bottom left-side of the web interface. The table provides users with the following information: Segment ID, Address, Segment Status, Velocity (mm/year), Acceleration (mm/year2), Inspection Priority Score, Zoom-to-Feature tool, sorted by Network Status.

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AEROFOTOTECA

L’AEROFOTOTECA NAZIONALERACCONTA....The Role of the Air Photographic Archive at the ICCD in Interpreting the Archaeology of the Tiber Delta and the Isola Sacra

by Kristian Strutt

Between 1998 and 2012, the Portus Project investigated the archaeology of Rome’s Imperial port and its surrounding area through archaeological fieldwork. The project, directed by Prof. Simon Keay at the Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, was a collaborative effort in-volving the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge, the British School at Rome and the Parco Archeologico di Ostia Antica together with other orga-nisations. A significant portion of the project work in the field consisted of non-intrusive ar-chaeological survey, comprising geophysical survey (Fig. 1), fieldwalking and topographic survey (Fig.2). The first years of the project (1998-2004) consisted of geophysical survey and fieldwalking around Portus and the environs of the Imperial port (the results of which are published in Keay et al. 2005). Subsequent survey (2008-2012) was also conducted in the area between Portus and Ostia Antica, the Isola Sacra, to inve-stigate the nature and extent of the archaeological remains lin-king Portus to the city of Ostia (results of the Isola Sacra survey are due for publication this summer in Keay et al. forthco-ming). The project covered much of the overall landscape with geophysical survey (Fig. 3), and the work provided an opportunity for utilising an in-tegrated approach to landscape

archaeology, drawing not only on the main field methods used in the profession, but using other datasets available from ar-chive sources, including satellite imagery, LiDAR and archaeo-logical database entries, work which also formed the basis of the author’s doctoral research (Strutt 2019). Use of archive data also provided the opportu-nity to access and analyse the air

photographs held by the ICCD, providing the most useful data-set for the archive-based analyti-cal work, and results crucial to the full interpretation of the archaeology between Portus and Ostia.

Previous Use of Air Photos in the Tiber DeltaThe use of air photographic images for archaeology is not

Fig. 1 - Fluxgate gradiometer magnetometry being carried out on the Isola Sacra (photo: K. Strutt).

Fig. 2 - Topographic survey being conducted using a GPS with base station and rover (pho-to: K. Strutt).

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new, with pioneering work being conducted in the first years of the 20th century in particular (Crawford 1928; Crawford and Keiller 1928; Guaitoli 2003), and a ballo-on flight forming the basis of early aerial photographs of the ancient city of Ostia in 1911 (Shepherd 2006). The nature of the development of aerial photography, and in particular the advent of the technique for military use, meant significant developments in the techno-logy. The intense action in the Mediterranean during World War II also meant that a large number of photographs were ta-ken by different air forces, prin-cipally the Luftwaffe, the Royal Air Force and US Airforce (Shepherd 2013; 2013a). The location of the Tiber delta and Portus means that the area formed the focus of intensive reconnaissance photography during WWII, much of which has been deposited at the ICCD. The photographs were taken from different altitudes, under different lighting condi-tions, and at different times of the year, allowing the researcher to analyse material under va-rying ground conditions, where sub-surface archaeology may show up only in certain sea-sons or under particular crops. These air photographs in the area of the Tiber delta formed the focus in some of Bradford’s (1957) work, demonstrating the form of the Trajanic Harbour at Portus and the associated Claudian Canal. The approach devised by the Portus Project in reassessing this landscape also provided an opportunity to integrate the air photographic records held at the ICCD.

The Portus Project and the Survey of the Isola SacraThe primary use of the air pho-

tographs from the Aerofototeca at the ICCD was to secure high and low altitude photo-graphs for the area surrounding Portus. Different swathes of photography, digitised in the archive, were geo-referenced using ArcGIS software, to form a background of air photos for the project (Fig. 4). Many of the archaeological features in the vicinity of Portus showed in these images, in which the RAF photos were used. Features showing in the photographs were digitised, allowing the overlay of these features with our geophysical survey inter-pretations. These, together with the interpretations of satellite imagery, overlaid with data from the archaeological gazetteer, formed the basis of the analysis and interpretation of the landscape (Keay et al. 2005; Keay et al. 2014; 2014a; Keay et al. forthcoming; Strutt 2019). While this methodology provi-ded contextual information on a number of sites and features in this landscape, many showed both in the results of the geo-physical survey and in the air photographs. One particular

example illustrates the absolute necessity of integrating the hi-storic air photographs with the project survey data. Our survey of the Isola Sacra had provided

Fig. 3 - Coverage of geophysics for the area of Portus and the Isola Sacra, showing the magnetometry and the large-scale landscape approach taken by the research.

Fig. 4 - A composite of RAF air photographs from the Aerofototeca of the ICCD.


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evidence of a possible ancient canal crossing the area between Portus and Ostia (Keay et al. 2011). As the survey progressed it was not always possible to gain access to survey particular areas of the landscape. Analysis of modern satellite imagery proved that much of the survey area had been built on in the latter part of the 20th century. It was to the historic air pho-tographs that the project team turned in an effort to glean as much evidence of the archae-ology as possible. The RAF photographs showed very little on the Isola Sacra, in direct contrast to the area around Portus. However, investigation of the photographs taken by

the Aeronautica Militare in 1957 revealed photographs that indicated a faint linear feature across the study area (Fig. 5). As the survey progressed on the ground, the results of the ma-gnetometry were integrated in our GIS with the images taken by the Aeronautica Militare, showing that the feature marked the eastern side of an ancient Roman canal, traversing the Isola Sacra from Portus to the bank of the Tiber opposite Ostia. Varying access to land meant that much of this area could not be surveyed, and thus the air photographs formed a critical component of the analysis and interpretation for the archaeology of the area (Fig. 6).The archives of the Aerofototeca at the ICCD proved crucial to the full analysis of this impor-tant archaeological landscape, and the combination of dif-ferent techniques provided a strong methodological approach to the study of the area.

Fig. 6 - Composite image with the results of the magnetometry overlaid on the Aeronautica Militare air photo, showing the coverage of the geophysics, and how the tracing of the east side of the canal would not have been possible without inte-grating methods.

Fig. 5 - Photograph taken by the Aeronautica Militare (AM_1957_149_1_23_62640_0 a) showing Portus, Ostia and the Isola Sacra. It is these photos that show, faintly, the line of the Roman canal across the Isola Sacra.

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REFERENCESBradford, J.S.P. (1957), Ancient Landscapes: Studies in Field Archaeology. London; G. Bell and Sons. Crawford, O. G. S. (1928) Air Survey and Archaeology. Norwich: Ordnance Survey.Crawford, O. G. S. and Keiller, A. (1928) Wessex from the Air. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Guaitoli, M. (2003) Lo sguardo di Icaro. Le collezioni dell’Aerofototeca Nazionale per la conoscenza del territorio. Roma: Campisano.Keay, S., Millett, M., Paroli, L. and Strutt, K. (2005) Portus. London: The British School at Rome and Soprintendenza Archeologica di Ostia.Keay, S., Millett, M. and Strutt, K. (2014) ‘The canal system and Tiber delta at Portus.Assessing the nature of man-made waterways and their relationship with the natural environment’, Water History, 6(1), 11–30.Keay, S., Parcak, S. and Strutt, K. (2014a) ‘High resolution space and ground-based remote sensing and implications for landscape archaeology: the case from Portus, Italy’, Journal of Archaeological Science, 52, 277–292.Shepherd, E. J. (2006) ‘Il “Rilievo Topofotografico di Ostia dal Pallone” (1911)’, Archeologia Aerea 2,15–38.Shepherd, E. J., Leone, G., Negri, A. and Palazzi, D. (2013) La collezione aerofotografica British School at Rome (BSR) conservata in ICCD-Aerofototeca Nazionale (AFN). Report 2013 sullo stato di avanzamento delle attività. Rome.Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo.Shepherd, E. J., Palazzi, D. S., Leone, G. and Mavica, M. M. M. (2013a) ‘La collezione c . d . USAAF dell’ Aerofototeca Nazionale. Lavori in corso’, Archeologia Aerea, 6,13–32.Strutt, Kristian, David (2019) Settlement and land use in the Tiber Delta and its environs 3000 BC – AD 300. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/433953/

ABSTRACTThe air photographic archive of the ICCD provides an essential resource for archaeological research in Italy and the Mediterrane-an. This paper reviews the use of archive material for the Portus Project, and its role in interpreting the ancient landscape of Portus and Ostia at the mouth of the river Tiber, where analysis of air photos was integrated with geophysical survey and archaeological fieldwork.

KEYWORDSArchaeology; Geophysics; Portus; Maritime Archaeology; Roman; Landscapes; Magnetometry; Air Photographs; ICCD

AUTHORKristian [email protected] of Archaeology, University of SouthamptonHighfield, Southampton, SO17 1BF

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