2016-10-26
Using satellites to manage urban chaos
In the face of this challenge, how can governments possibly manage the urban settlement process? Solid knowledge of these population movements is important for designing public safety projects or determining where implementation of a health clinic or school is feasible. In addition, irregular population settlements along rivers or on hilltops or embankments are a magnet for natural disasters such as floods and landslides. The State must identify and monitor constructions in these areas to develop preventative actions and ensure rapid and effective response mechanisms in the case of accidents.
With a view to minimizing the damage caused by natural disasters, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) created a research group on accident prevention. Embedded within the group is a team with primary responsibility for assessing constructed areas and developing a computer mapping methodology through satellite imagery. This system, however, is nothing like Google Earth. The JRC’s mapping methodology applies satellite imagery to identify patterns in target fields, corresponding to constructed areas, through remote sensing techniques, digital processing of images, and pattern recognition.
As part of its effort to develop a global map of constructed areas, the JRC forged a partnership with Brazil’s National Institute of Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais – INPE), a pioneer in the dissemination of free satellite images. The partnership was then transformed into a full-fledged cooperation initiative under the EU-Brazil Sector Dialogues Support Facility. Use by JRC of images captured by the Sino-Brazilian satellite CBERS-2B enabled INPE to conduct tests based on the European method and to map Brazilian territory, an initiative that contributed to development of the European research centre’s global map.
As part of the 7th Call of the Sector Dialogues Support Facilities, missions were conducted to strengthen relations and step up information exchanges between Brazil and the EU, with a view to executing a case study through which INPE could better understand how the European methodology operates. In the initial stage, images from the Paraíba Valley in the interior of São Paulo were employed, paving the way for a pilot project in 2015 and 2016 sponsored under the aegis of the 8th Call of the Sector Dialogues Support Facility. In the second action stage, 20,000 satellite images of Brazil captured in 2012 were processed by INPE using the European technology. New missions were conducted to Europe to present the respective results and secure JRC validation of the method’s application, and, in addition, to calibrate the system.
Currently, INPE and JRC are in the process of validating the 2012 images. Subsequently, the two institutions will execute a new round of processing for more recent images of the Brazilian territory, for the purpose of developing a more precise and updated map of constructed areas, given that “the results of the last mission were highly promising, generating the prospect for continued collaboration”, according to Thales Sehn Körting, an image processing specialist and the action’s lead operational officer at INPE.
The cooperation initiative between the EU and Brazil, supported by the Sector Dialogues Support Service since 2014, will serve to provide each side with an essential tool to prevent natural disasters and development more precise and effective public policies.
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