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Rivista bimestrale - anno XXI - Numero 3/<strong>2017</strong> - Sped. in abb. postale 70% - Filiale di Roma<br />

LAND CARTOGRAPHY<br />

GIS<br />

CADASTRE<br />

GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION<br />

PHOTOGRAMMETRY<br />

3D<br />

SURVEY TOPOGRAPHY<br />

CAD<br />

BIM<br />

EARTH OBSERVATION SPACE<br />

WEBGIS<br />

UAV<br />

URBAN PLANNING<br />

CONSTRUCTION<br />

LBS<br />

SMART CITY<br />

GNSS<br />

ENVIRONMENT<br />

NETWORKS<br />

LiDAR<br />

CULTURAL HERITAGE<br />

Mag/Giu <strong>2017</strong> anno XXI N°3<br />

La prima rivista italiana di geomatica e geografia intelligente<br />

Numero<br />

dedicato a<br />

INTERGEO <strong>2017</strong><br />

completamente<br />

in Inglese<br />

Emerging<br />

Technologies<br />

the digital revolution around and above us<br />

NEW TRENDS IN<br />

GEOMATICS<br />

IMPROVING RESILIENCE TO<br />

EMERGENCIES<br />

VGI AND MAPPING IN<br />

EMERGENCY


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20 years of <strong>GEOmedia</strong><br />

I would like to remember to our readers that <strong>GEOmedia</strong> started in Italy more than twenty years<br />

ago, while the revolution of Geomatics was approaching to the field of interest and development<br />

of topography, remote sensing and photogrammetry. At the same time the University of Calgary in<br />

Canada began the first course and experimental programs on innovation of geomatics engineering<br />

in the world.<br />

We are proud to announce in this publishing, completely in English to celebrate the INTERGEO<br />

Fair in Berlin, the start of the first Italian MSc in Geoinformatics engineering at the “Politecnico di<br />

Milano”, about what you’ll read inside our papers, among the others, specifically in the short article<br />

by Ludovico Biagi.<br />

During last years <strong>GEOmedia</strong>, the Italian magazine on Geomatics, occasionally accepted for<br />

publication English insert or special issue, especially when the review has been regarding papers for<br />

the annual trade INTERGEO, the global hub of geospatial Community.<br />

GEOSPATIAL 4.0, BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING, BIG DATA, SMART<br />

CITIES, OPEN DATA are among the INTERGEO’S important issues we all need to address.<br />

At today the geo industry is claimed as one of the sectors with the biggest shortage of skilled labour,<br />

moreover the request to recruit competent young professionals is growing mainly in the public<br />

interest. In INTERGEO event the employers and the skilled professionals are together with many<br />

geo-technology experts of the public services, to explain this changing world to young workers.<br />

Europe needs not only good recruitment strategies, but also new ideas to overcome bottleneck<br />

problems and meet the needs of an ageing workforce.<br />

In the very next future we’ll need both spatial data analysts and geodesists. INTERGEO <strong>2017</strong> is an<br />

inspirational experience and surely an initiative that will give us new insights.<br />

For this <strong>GEOmedia</strong>, now as official media partner of the event, is in the distribution desk of the<br />

Conference Hall, for dissemination of the Italian knowledge and experience in the geospatial field,<br />

that we consider as one of the main cornerstone for land management, territory, environment and<br />

development of our smart (historic) cities.<br />

The Italian contribution to Geomatics has a long tradition for advancing purposes in the field of<br />

topography, photogrammetry, remote sensing and mapping. Floods, marine coasts, hydrogeological<br />

hazards, volcanic and earthquake risk monitoring and management are at the daily information<br />

of the citizens and attention of all people involved in the organizations appointed. Across a fragile<br />

territory to be protected, rich of Monuments, Sites and Archaeological remains, we extend a field<br />

where the Geomatics methods and technologies are almost indispensable and so necessary.<br />

For this aim too, some years ago we imagine Archeomatica, a magazine oriented to a wide<br />

dissemination of changing technologies for Cultural Heritage throughout the times. The<br />

internationalization of Archeomatica is one of our future goal for which we hope to excite all the<br />

interest we can among our readers so as to get additional collaborations.<br />

Enjoy your reading,<br />

Renzo Carlucci


In this<br />

issue...<br />

FOCUS<br />

REPORT<br />

COLUMNS<br />

36 NEWS<br />

New Trends in<br />

Geomatics, in the Era<br />

of Lowcost Sensors,<br />

Free and Open<br />

Source Software and<br />

HPC GeoBigData<br />

infrastructures<br />

by Roberta Ravanelli, Martina<br />

Di Rita, Valeria Belloni,<br />

Andrea Nascetti, Augusto<br />

Mazzoni, Mattia Crespi<br />

6<br />

46 AGENDA<br />

The image on the background is<br />

a Sentinel-2A satellite taken over<br />

the peninsulas and islands of the<br />

Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar.<br />

With a length of over 2200<br />

km, the Irrawaddy River is the<br />

country's largest, flowing northto-south<br />

before fanning out into<br />

the delta and emptying into the<br />

Andaman Sea.<br />

Evident by the brown colour of<br />

the rivers and streams, sediments<br />

carried by the water are deposited<br />

in the delta. These deposits make<br />

the area very fertile, and the accumulation<br />

of deposits over time<br />

causes the coastline to advance.<br />

Owing to the rich soils, the region<br />

is the country’s largest rice producer.<br />

This image was captured in<br />

March <strong>2017</strong> after the harvesting<br />

season but before the planting, so<br />

bare ground appears beige.<br />

This image, also featured on the<br />

ESA Earth from Space video programme,<br />

combines two acquisitions<br />

by the Copernicus Sentinel-<br />

2A satellite in March <strong>2017</strong><br />

On the cover image of Autonomous<br />

Driving. Significant advancements<br />

in satellite-based positioning are<br />

contributing to the development of<br />

better transport services and new<br />

applications for safe transport and<br />

smart mobility. With its flexibility, fast<br />

growing capability, low infrastructure<br />

costs and long-term sustainable use,<br />

GNSS is an important asset in the<br />

design of new Intelligent Transport<br />

System (ITS) infrastructures.<br />

Significant advancements in satellitebased<br />

positioning are contributing to<br />

the development of better transport<br />

services and new applications for safe<br />

transport and smart mobility. With<br />

its flexibility, fast growing capability,<br />

low infrastructure costs and longterm<br />

sustainable use, GNSS is an<br />

important asset in the design of new<br />

Intelligent Transport System (ITS)<br />

infrastructures.<br />

12<br />

18<br />

Emerging<br />

Technologies: the<br />

digital revolution<br />

around and above us<br />

by Marco Lisi<br />

Improving<br />

Resilience to<br />

Emergencies<br />

through<br />

Advanced Cyber<br />

Technologies: the<br />

I-REACT project<br />

by Claudia Maltoni, Claudio<br />

Rossi, Guzmán Sánchez<br />

geomediaonline.it<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong>, published bi-monthly, is the Italian magazine for<br />

geomatics. Since 20 years is publishing to open a worldwide<br />

window to the Italian market and viceversa. Themes are on<br />

latest news, developments and applications in the complex<br />

field of earth surface sciences. <strong>GEOmedia</strong> dial with all activities<br />

relating to the acquisition, processing, querying, analysis,<br />

presentation, dissemination, management and use of geo-data<br />

and geo-information. The magazine covers subjects such as<br />

surveying, environment, mapping, GNSS systems, GIS, Earth<br />

Observation, Geospatial Data, BIM, UAV and 3D technologies.


ADVERTISERS<br />

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The new MSc in<br />

Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering at<br />

Politecnico di<br />

Milano<br />

by Ludovico Biagi<br />

Aeronike 23<br />

Codevintec 34<br />

E-geos 24<br />

Epsilon Italia 37<br />

Esri Italia 39<br />

Geogrà 41<br />

Geomax 29<br />

INTERGEO 35<br />

ME.S.A 17<br />

Planetek Italia 48<br />

Stonex 40<br />

VGI and crisis 30<br />

mapping in an<br />

emergency situation<br />

by Lucia Saganeiti, Federico<br />

Amato, Gabriele Nolè,<br />

Survey Lab 44<br />

TECHNOLOGY for ALL 36<br />

Teorema 46<br />

Topcon 47<br />

Trimble 2<br />

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42<br />

Rheticus: Dynamic<br />

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geoinformation<br />

service for critical<br />

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monitoring<br />

VERTISER<br />

by Giuseppe Forenza<br />

Chief Editor<br />

RENZO CARLUCCI, direttore@rivistageomedia.it<br />

Editorial Board<br />

Vyron Antoniou, Fabrizio Bernardini, Mario Caporale,<br />

Luigi Colombo, Mattia Crespi, Luigi Di Prinzio,<br />

Michele Dussi, Michele Fasolo, Marco Lisi, Flavio Lupia,<br />

Beniamino Murgante, Aldo Riggio, Mauro Salvemini,<br />

Domenico Santarsiero, Attilio Selvini, Donato Tufillaro<br />

Managing Director<br />

FULVIO BERNARDINI, fbernardini@rivistageomedia.it<br />

Editorial Staff<br />

VALERIO CARLUCCI, GIANLUCA PITITTO,<br />

redazione@rivistageomedia.it<br />

Marketing Assistant<br />

TATIANA IASILLO, diffusione@rivistageomedia.it<br />

Account manager<br />

ALFONSO QUAGLIONE, marketing@rivistageomedia.it<br />

Design<br />

DANIELE CARLUCCI, dcarlucci@rivistageomedia.it<br />

MediaGEO soc. coop.<br />

Via Palestro, 95 00185 Roma<br />

Tel. 06.64871209 - Fax. 06.62209510<br />

info@rivistageomedia.it<br />

ISSN 1128-8132<br />

Reg. Trib. di Roma N° 243/2003 del 14.05.03<br />

Stampa: SPADAMEDIA srl<br />

VIA DEL LAVORO 31, 00043 CIAMPINO (ROMA)<br />

Publisher: mediaGEO società cooperativa<br />

Science & Technology Communication<br />

Paid Science subscriptions<br />

& Technology Communication<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> is available bi-monthly on a subscription basis.<br />

The annual subscription rate is € 45. It is possible to subscribe<br />

at any time via https://geo4all.it/abbonamento. The cost of one<br />

issue is € 9 €, for the previous issue the cost is € 12 €. Prices and<br />

conditions may be subject to change.<br />

Magazine founded by: Domenico Santarsiero.<br />

Issue closed on: 20/08/<strong>2017</strong>.


FOCUS<br />

New Trends in Geomatics, in the Era of Lowcost<br />

Sensors, Free and Open Source Software<br />

and HPC GeoBigData infrastructures<br />

by Roberta Ravanelli, Martina Di Rita, Valeria Belloni, Andrea Nascetti, Augusto Mazzoni, Mattia Crespi<br />

This review briefly presents some<br />

methodologies and applications developed at<br />

the Geodesy and Geomatics Division (DICEA) of<br />

University of Rome “La Sapienza”.<br />

Directly related to the current and increasing<br />

availability of new and innovative software and<br />

hardware, they are already ready for industrial<br />

applications and hopefully can broaden the<br />

interaction between Geomatics and other<br />

scientific and technological disciplines.<br />

Fig. 1 - Real-time tracked movements with VADASE using GALILEO E1 observations acquired<br />

by a low-cost single frequency receiver with a patch antenna<br />

The present and continuously<br />

increasing<br />

availability of more<br />

and more low-cost sensors (in<br />

the frame of the Internet of<br />

Things (IoT)), Free and Open<br />

Source Software (FOSS) and<br />

High Performance Computing<br />

(HPC) infrastructures for<br />

managing GeoBigData has<br />

obviously a strong impact in<br />

Geomatics. The availability of<br />

these hardware and software<br />

tools enables both to develop<br />

new applications but also to<br />

stimulate new challenging<br />

investigations related to the<br />

modeling of the observations<br />

supplied by these sensors, in<br />

the well known circular fashion<br />

between science and technology<br />

(Sansò and Crespi, 2015).<br />

Exploiting GALILEO for realtime<br />

displacements detection<br />

with low-cost single frequency<br />

receivers<br />

In last years, mainly thanks to<br />

their low cost, single frequency<br />

GNSS receivers started to be<br />

used in many applications.<br />

Evaluation kits, based on this<br />

kind of hardware, are nowadays<br />

available at few hundreds of<br />

Euros. Most of them are able<br />

to collect code and phase single<br />

frequency observations not<br />

only from GPS systems but also<br />

from other GNSS constellations<br />

like GLONASS, GALILEO<br />

and BEIDOU.<br />

On a technical point of view,<br />

these kits are quite easily usable<br />

and it is possible to set them<br />

up in order to broadcast both<br />

real-time streams (for real time<br />

precise positioning application)<br />

and collected observations in<br />

RINEX format (for post processing<br />

analysis).<br />

Our research group carried<br />

out many experiments on this<br />

topic. In particular, we investigated<br />

also through low-cost<br />

receivers the potentialities of<br />

GALILEO system, starting<br />

from the very first availability<br />

of GALILEO signals. Thanks<br />

to these research, the VADASE<br />

team was awarded by ESA on<br />

1st April 2014 as one of the<br />

first 50 users worldwide able<br />

to get a “fix” with GALILEO<br />

system (Branzanti et al., 2014).<br />

Through the application of<br />

the VADASE variometric approach<br />

(Benedetti et al., 2015),<br />

we managed to reconstruct the<br />

movement of a low-cost NVS<br />

patch antenna, suitably fixed<br />

to a bike wheel, processing E1<br />

phase observations in a realtime<br />

scenario, achieving 1 cm<br />

accuracy; this experiment clearly<br />

showed the relevant potential<br />

of the low-cost single frequency<br />

receivers for real-time movements<br />

detection (Fig. 1).<br />

Moreover, many tests were performed<br />

in order to evaluate the<br />

potentialities of low-cost single<br />

frequency receivers also in<br />

Network Real Time Kinematic<br />

(NRTK) positioning. It was<br />

demonstrated that, using u-<br />

Blox receiver with GPS, it is<br />

possible to achieve fixing times<br />

6 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

(less than a minute) and accuracies<br />

(few centimetres) not so far<br />

to double frequency approach,<br />

provided good surveying conditions<br />

(full sky visibility, stable<br />

and reliable Virtual Reference<br />

Station augmentation needed<br />

to handle ionospheric delays<br />

through double differentiation<br />

with very short baselines)<br />

are guaranteed and an external<br />

topographic antenna is used.<br />

The contribution of GALILEO<br />

E1 observations in NRTK<br />

positioning is currently under<br />

investigation.<br />

Finally, in the last months, a<br />

focus on GPS and GALILEO<br />

interoperability with VADASE<br />

was undertaken. VADASE<br />

routines have been extended to<br />

make it possible to use GPS and<br />

GALILEO phase observations in<br />

a twin fashion mode: independent<br />

solutions or staked observations<br />

combined solutions. Some<br />

tests have been carried out in<br />

collaboration with the University<br />

of Trento (Tesolin et al., <strong>2017</strong>)<br />

using u-Blox receivers.<br />

Also in this application, results<br />

are very promising, paving<br />

the way to a wider use of single<br />

frequency receivers also as<br />

multi-constellation low-cost<br />

permanent stations. For these<br />

purposes a single frequency<br />

low cost GNSS permanent<br />

station, named LOW1 (Fig.<br />

2), has been installed and activated<br />

at the Faculty of Civil<br />

and Industrial Engineering<br />

- University of Rome “La<br />

Sapienza”. Single frequency<br />

observations are routinely collected<br />

and archived at 1Hz observation<br />

rate since doy 100 of<br />

<strong>2017</strong>; all the data are available<br />

to the scientific community.<br />

3D Modelling of<br />

Archaeological Small Finds by<br />

Low-Cost Range Cameras<br />

Nowadays 3D models may play<br />

a key role in archaeology and<br />

cultural heritage management<br />

in general, since they can easily<br />

provide answers to scientific<br />

needs in the field of conservation,<br />

monitoring, restoration<br />

and mediation of architectural,<br />

archaeological and cultural heritage.<br />

It is thus essential to identify<br />

new techniques, capable of<br />

easily providing low-cost and<br />

real-time 3D models of cultural<br />

heritage objects, with the required<br />

accuracy. Range cameras<br />

can give a valuable contribute<br />

to achieve this goal: they are active<br />

imaging sensors, low-cost<br />

and easy-to-use, able to natively<br />

measure the distances of several<br />

points at high frame rate<br />

(30 - 60 Hz) and can be used<br />

as 3D scanners to easily collect<br />

dense point clouds practically<br />

in real time. Furthermore,<br />

Simultaneous Localization And<br />

Mapping (SLAM) algorithms,<br />

such as KinectFusion (Izadi et<br />

al., 2011; Newcombe et al.,<br />

2011) leverage the depth data<br />

and the high frame rate that<br />

range cameras offer, in order to<br />

fuse the depth maps captured<br />

from different view points as<br />

soon as they are acquired. In<br />

this way, through the use of<br />

user-friendly scanning apps<br />

(through Augmented Reality,<br />

the 3D model appears in real<br />

time on the tablet/smartphone<br />

connected to the device, guiding<br />

the user during the scanning),<br />

range cameras can collect<br />

Fig. 2 - Low-cost GPS permanent station LOW1<br />

easily and practically in real<br />

time the overall 3D model of<br />

the scanned scene. In addition,<br />

such sensors are continually<br />

evolving and they will be soon<br />

integrated in consumer grade<br />

smart devices, enabling their<br />

use together with other sensors.<br />

Thanks to all these features,<br />

nowadays this technology is sufficiently<br />

ripe to play an important<br />

role for modelling archaeological<br />

objects. Indeed, range<br />

cameras can be easily used for<br />

documenting small finds, thus<br />

representing a valid alternative<br />

to the often time consuming<br />

traditional techniques, and<br />

preserving at the same time the<br />

mental energy of archaeologists<br />

for the study and interpretation<br />

of the artefacts discovered during<br />

excavations.<br />

Therefore, our research group<br />

has investigated the 3D modelling<br />

capabilities of a promising<br />

low-cost range camera,<br />

the Structure Sensor TM by<br />

Occipital TM for rapid modelling<br />

Fig. 3 - Comparison<br />

between the model of a<br />

globular jug obtained<br />

with the Structure<br />

Sensor and with<br />

photogram-metry: the<br />

first can be easily<br />

obtained in real-time by<br />

a not ex-pert user<br />

(archaeolo-gist, etc.), the<br />

second required a high<br />

level of competence for<br />

processing the im-ages<br />

with a dedicate software<br />

(Cypro-Phoenician juglets<br />

from Achzi b ( Inv.<br />

M677 ; courtesy Museum<br />

VOEM , Sapienza<br />

University of Rome).<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 7


FOCUS<br />

Fig. 4 - Example of measurements that can be taken on models (in meters). Canaanite Jar from the<br />

Necropolis of Bardhaa (BL1536, Al-Bad Giacaman Museum, Bethlehem - Palestine : Nigro et al.<br />

<strong>2017</strong>, fig. 42)<br />

archaeological objects, in order<br />

to assess the metric quality of<br />

their 3D geometry reconstruction<br />

(research group of Prof.<br />

Nigro, Ravanelli et al., 2016,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>a, <strong>2017</strong>c). In general, the<br />

performed analysis shows that<br />

Structure Sensor is capable to<br />

acquire the 3D geometry of a<br />

small object with an accuracy<br />

comparable at millimeter level<br />

to that obtainable with the<br />

more traditional photogrammetric<br />

method, even though<br />

the finer details are not always<br />

correctly modelled (Fig. 3). The<br />

obtained results are therefore<br />

very promising, showing that<br />

the range camera used for this<br />

work, due to its low-cost and<br />

flexibility, is a suitable tool for<br />

the rapid documentation of<br />

archaeological small finds, especially<br />

when not expert users are<br />

involved.<br />

Finally, it is worth underlining<br />

that a “geomatic” 3D model,<br />

showing therefore a geometry<br />

with a real metric, provides<br />

all the necessary information<br />

to completely describe the<br />

archaeological small finds.<br />

Furthermore, it allows to take a<br />

posteriori in depth measurements,<br />

such as the volume<br />

computation and section<br />

visualization (Fig. 4).<br />

Digital Image Correlation<br />

Software for Displacement<br />

Field Measurement in<br />

Structural Monitoring<br />

Applications<br />

Recently, there has been a growing<br />

interest in studying noncontact<br />

techniques for strain<br />

and displacement measurement<br />

in structural monitoring applications.<br />

For this reason, a free<br />

and open source 2D Digital<br />

Image Correlation (DIC)<br />

software, named py2DIC and<br />

completely written in Python,<br />

was developed at the Geodesy<br />

and Geomatics Division of<br />

DICEA, University of Rome<br />

"La Sapienza" (Ravanelli et al.,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>b).<br />

In particular, DIC is the term<br />

used in structural engineering<br />

applications to refer to the<br />

well-known template matching<br />

method, generally used in<br />

photogrammetry and computer<br />

vision to retrieve homologous<br />

points. DIC is indeed an optical<br />

technique able to measure<br />

full field displacements and<br />

to evaluate the corresponding<br />

strain field, by comparing<br />

digital images of the surface of<br />

a material sample at different<br />

stages of deformation.<br />

The potentialities of py2DIC<br />

were investigated by processing<br />

the images captured during<br />

a tensile test performed in the<br />

Lab of Structural Engineering,<br />

where three different Glass Fiber<br />

Reinforced Polymer samples<br />

were subjected to a controlled<br />

tension by means of a universal<br />

testing machine.<br />

The results, compared with the<br />

values independently measured<br />

by several strain gauges fixed on<br />

the samples, denote the possibility<br />

to successfully characterize<br />

the deformation mechanism of<br />

the analyzed material (Fig.s 5<br />

and 6). Py2DIC is indeed able<br />

to compute displacements at<br />

few microns level, in reasonable<br />

agreement with the reference,<br />

both in terms of displacements<br />

(again, at few microns in the<br />

average) and Poisson's module<br />

(Fig. 7).<br />

Fig. 5 - Comparison between the vertical displacements obtained by the py2DIC software and the strain gauges measurements<br />

8 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

Fig. 6 - Comparison between the horizontal displacements obtained by the py2DIC software and the strain gauges measurements<br />

A New and Unified Approach<br />

for Digital Surface Models<br />

generation from optical and<br />

SAR satellite imagery: DATE<br />

FOSS4G<br />

By now, satellites are overwhelmingly<br />

present in our daily<br />

life, for a big variety of different<br />

services and applications<br />

(weather report, navigation system,<br />

Earth observation, ect.). In<br />

particular, remote sensing data<br />

obtained from space, complement<br />

and complete Earth-based<br />

measurements: they are essential<br />

if a global view of our Earth is<br />

required.<br />

One of the most important<br />

applications of remote sensing,<br />

is the generation of Digital<br />

Surface Models (DSMs), that<br />

have a large relevance in many<br />

engineering, environmental,<br />

surveying, Earth sciences,<br />

safety and security applications.<br />

DSMs can be derived<br />

with different approaches, the<br />

stereoscopic approach, starting<br />

from satellite images, is a wellestablished<br />

one. Every day, a big<br />

amount of images are acquired<br />

by the thousands of satellites<br />

orbiting around the Earth, creating<br />

a multi-view and multitemporal<br />

bunch of images,<br />

that allow to obtain redundant<br />

information for monitoring and<br />

analysing our world.<br />

The development of a Free and<br />

Open Source Software (FOSS),<br />

able to generate DSMs from<br />

such satellite images, is therefore<br />

a topic of great interest. In<br />

the framework of 2014 Google<br />

Summer of Code, our research<br />

group developed DATE, a<br />

Free and Open Source for<br />

Geospatial (FOSS4G), having<br />

as early purpose a fully automatic<br />

DSMs generation from<br />

high resolution optical satellite<br />

imagery acquired by the most<br />

common sensors (Di Rita et al.,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>a, <strong>2017</strong>b). Nowadays, it<br />

is also able to exploit Synthetic<br />

Aperture Radar (SAR) images<br />

Fig. 7 - Comparison between the Poisson’s ratio obtained by the py2DIC software and the<br />

strain gauges measurements<br />

for radargrammetric applications<br />

(Di Rita et al., 2016). As<br />

a matter of fact, SAR satellite<br />

systems may give important<br />

contribution in terms of Digital<br />

Surface Models (DSMs) generation<br />

considering their complete<br />

independence from logistic<br />

constraints on the ground and<br />

weather conditions (Nascetti et<br />

al., 2015). In recent years, the<br />

new availability of very high<br />

resolution SAR data (up to 20<br />

cm Ground Sample Distance)<br />

gave a new impulse to radargrammetry<br />

and allowed new<br />

applications and developments<br />

(Capaldo et al., 2011).<br />

The main idea behind DATE,<br />

is to overcome the issues related<br />

to epipolar resampling<br />

for satellite images, for which<br />

epipolar geometry achievement<br />

is not straightforward (Di Rita,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>): epipolarity is achieved<br />

in the object space (Ground<br />

quasi-Epipolar Imagery (GrEI))<br />

(Fig. 8) thanks to the images<br />

ground projection. Moreover,<br />

DATE key features include also<br />

the capability to handle a large<br />

amount of data since it manages<br />

to process different images in a<br />

sequential and totally automatic<br />

way; the use of computer vision<br />

algorithms in order to improve<br />

the processing efficiency and<br />

make the DSMs generation<br />

process fully automatic; the free<br />

and open source aspect of the<br />

developed code (https://github.<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 9


FOCUS<br />

com/martidi/opencv_dsm/tree/<br />

imageStack). An innovative<br />

approach based on a coarseto-fine<br />

pyramidal scheme is<br />

adopted to take advantage of<br />

iterative solutions at gradually<br />

increasing resolution in order<br />

to refine the epipolarity constrain<br />

between the image pair:<br />

raw satellite images resolution<br />

is initially reduced by a downsampling<br />

factor, then these<br />

sampled images are projected<br />

in a ground geometry using an<br />

a-priori (freely available and<br />

even coarse) DSM, in order to<br />

generate orthorectified images<br />

with a transversal parallax error<br />

below the initial reduced<br />

resolution. These orthorectified<br />

images can act as GrEI and can<br />

undergo a dense image matching<br />

procedure at the chosen<br />

reduced resolution, obtaining<br />

the initial DSM corresponding<br />

to the first pyramidal level; this<br />

DSM becomes the input for<br />

the next pyramidal level.<br />

The achievable results are good<br />

in terms of statistical parameters,<br />

and they are comparable<br />

with those obtained through<br />

different software (even commercial)<br />

by other authors on<br />

the same test sites, whereas in<br />

terms of efficiency DATE outperforms<br />

most of them.<br />

Google Earth Engine potentials<br />

and capabilities for<br />

GeoBigData management and<br />

analysis<br />

Google Earth Engine (GEE)<br />

is a computing platform recently<br />

released by Google “for<br />

petabyte-scale scientific analysis<br />

and visualization of geospatial<br />

datasets” (Google Earth Engine<br />

Team, 2015). The GEE can be<br />

used to run geospatial analysis<br />

using a dedicated HPC infrastructure.<br />

GEE enable users to<br />

access geospatial information<br />

and satellite imagery, for global<br />

and large scale remote sensing<br />

applications. The free and<br />

public data archive includes<br />

more than 30 years of historical<br />

imagery and scientific datasets,<br />

daily updated and expanded:<br />

it contains over than two petabytes<br />

of geospatial data instantly<br />

available for analysis.<br />

The main idea behind GEE<br />

is that, also for the analysis of<br />

satellite and geospatial data, we<br />

are now moving towards the<br />

Big Data paradigm and consequently<br />

it is necessary to change<br />

the processing way from the<br />

standard procedure “bring data<br />

to users” to the opposite “bring<br />

users to data”: as a matter of<br />

fact, users can directly upload<br />

algorithms to the dedicated<br />

infrastructure removing the<br />

required time for data transfer<br />

and allowing the development<br />

of innovative applications. The<br />

platform supports generation<br />

of spatial and temporal mosaics,<br />

satellite imagery composites<br />

without clouds and gaps, as well<br />

as a variety of spectral indices,<br />

and can also be expanded and<br />

modified by the user even for<br />

customized applications (Pekel<br />

et al., 2016; Donchyts et al.,<br />

Fig. 8 - Comune di Fiumicino: confronto tra le sezioni di Censimento 1991 e quelle del 2001 e tra<br />

le sezioni di Censimento 2001 e quelle del 2011 (Fonte : Istat, Portale Cartografico Nazionale).<br />

2016). Indeed, GEE also includes<br />

an application programming<br />

framework that allows<br />

scientists to access to computational<br />

and data resources, to<br />

scale their current algorithms or<br />

develop new ones.<br />

As a significant example of<br />

GEE potentials, we analyzed<br />

the possibility to implement<br />

and deploy a tool for large-scale<br />

DSMs comparison, with a focus<br />

on two available free global<br />

DSMs (SRTM and ASTER<br />

GDEM) precision and accuracy,<br />

with respect to a more<br />

accurate reference DSM, that is<br />

the National Elevation Dataset<br />

(NED) for the American States,<br />

and a LiDAR DSM for the<br />

Italian region (Nascetti et al.,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>). Over the years, several<br />

studies have been conducted to<br />

evaluate the accuracy of both<br />

SRTM and ASTER DSMs,<br />

but in most of the cases the accuracy<br />

has been evaluated only<br />

on limited areas (Colmano et<br />

al., 2007; Koch et al., 2001).<br />

The main goal of this analysis<br />

was to perform a more global<br />

assessment exploiting the potentialities<br />

of GEE, and to demonstrate<br />

its capability for a nearly-global<br />

assessment of SRTM<br />

and ASTER accuracy. Proper<br />

routines to evaluate standard<br />

statistical parameters to represent<br />

DSM precision and accuracy<br />

(i.e. mean, median, standard<br />

deviation, NMAD, LE95)<br />

were implemented inside the<br />

GEE Code Editor. Moreover,<br />

the routines were used to characterize<br />

the accuracy of the<br />

input DSM within different<br />

slope classes. The evaluation has<br />

been performed on five different<br />

wide areas: four American<br />

States (Colorado, Michigan,<br />

Nevada, Utah) and one Italian<br />

Region (Trentino Alto-Adige,<br />

Northern Italy). The selected<br />

areas provide different land use,<br />

land covers and slopes, and are<br />

10 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

therefore suited for a comparison<br />

aimed at accuracy and reliability<br />

understanding.<br />

Overall, all the results achieved<br />

(Fig. 9 represents the results for<br />

Colorado) are pretty consistent<br />

showing a good accordance<br />

in their behaviour: SRTM and<br />

ASTER achieve almost the<br />

same results when compared<br />

both to NED and to LiDAR.<br />

In particular, the accuracies<br />

decrease with the increase of<br />

the slopes, with better results<br />

generated with SRTM for the<br />

first classes and, instead, a better<br />

behaviour shown by ASTER<br />

for the higher classes. This is<br />

due essentially to the different<br />

nature of the two DSMs<br />

(SRTM is SAR-based, ASTER<br />

Fig. 9 - Colorado: SRTM and ASTER assessment results<br />

is optical-based) and it could<br />

lead to make some assumptions<br />

about an optimum free nearlyglobal<br />

DSM: starting from the<br />

knowledge of the slope classes<br />

where they present a better accuracy<br />

with respect to the other,<br />

a more accurate global DSM<br />

can be generated as a result of<br />

an integration of both<br />

REFERENCES<br />

Benedetti, E., Branzanti, M., Colosimo, G., Mazzoni, A., Crespi, M. (2015) VADASE:<br />

State of the Art and New Developments of a Third Way to GNSS Seismology. In: Sneeuw<br />

N., Novák P., Crespi M., Sansò F. (eds) VIII Hotine-Marussi Symposium on Mathematical<br />

Geodesy. International Association of Geodesy Symposia, vol 142. Springer<br />

Branzanti, M., Benedetti, E., Colosimo, G., Mazzoni, A., Crespi, M. (2014). Real-time<br />

monitoring of fast displacements with VADASE: new applications and challenges with<br />

Galileo. ENC – GNSS 2014 Proceedings (Session C7) (online only).<br />

Capaldo, P., Crespi, M., Fratarcangeli, F., Nascetti, A. and Pieralice, F. (2011), Highresolution<br />

SAR radargrammetry: a first application with COSMO-SkyMed SpotLight<br />

imagery, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters. 8(6), pp. 1100-1104.<br />

Colmano, D., Crespi, M., Fabiani, U. and Zebisch, M., 2007. “Quality assessment of<br />

commercially available DEMs in mountain areas”. Geologic Hazards in Mountainous<br />

Areas.<br />

Di Rita, M., Andrea Nascetti and Mattia Crespi (<strong>2017</strong>a) Open source tool for DSMs<br />

generation from high resolution optical satellite imagery: development and testing of<br />

an OSSIM plug-in, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 38:7, 1788-1808, DOI:<br />

10.1080/01431161.<strong>2017</strong>.128830<br />

Di Rita, M., Nascetti, A., Fratarcangeli, F., Crespi, M. (2016). Upgrade of FOSS DATE<br />

plug-in: implementation of a new radargrammetric DSM generation capability, International<br />

Archives of Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences.<br />

41(B7): 821-825<br />

Di Rita, M., (<strong>2017</strong>). New trends for DSMs generation from optical and SAR satellite<br />

imagery: definition and implementation of an innovative strategy, PhD thesis, University<br />

of Rome “La Sapienza”.<br />

Di Rita, M., Nascetti, A., Crespi, M. (<strong>2017</strong>b). FOSS4G DATE assessment on the ISPRS<br />

optical stereo satellite data: a benchmark for DSM generation, International Archives of<br />

the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLII-1/W1.<br />

Donchyts, G., Baart, F., Winsemius, H., Gorelick, N., Kwadijk, J. and van de Giesen, N.,<br />

2016. “Earth’s surface water change over the past 30 years”. Nature Climate Change 6(9),<br />

pp. 810–813.<br />

Google Earth Engine Team, 2015. Google Earth Engine: a Planetary-scale Geospatial<br />

Analysis Platform. https://earthengine.google.com.<br />

Izadi, S., Kim, D., Hilliges, O., Molyneaux, D., Newcombe, R., Kohli, P., Shotton, J.,<br />

Hodges, S., Freeman, D., Davison, A. and Fitzgibbon, A. (2011) KinectFusion: real-time<br />

3D reconstruction and interaction using a moving depth camera. In Proceedings of the<br />

24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology.<br />

Koch, A. and Heipke, C., 2001. “Quality assessment of digital surface models derived<br />

from the shuttle radar topography mission (srtm)”. Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium,<br />

Vol. 6, pp. 2863–2865.<br />

Nascetti, A. et al, (2015), Radargrammetric Digital Surface Models Generation from High<br />

Resolution Satellite SAR Imagery: Methodology and Case Studies, International Association<br />

of Geodesy Symposia.<br />

Nascetti, A., Di Rita, M., Ravanelli, R., Amicuzi, M., Esposito, S., and Crespi, M. (<strong>2017</strong>).<br />

Free global DSM assessment on large scale areas exploiting the potentialities of the innovative<br />

Google Earth Engine platform. International Archives of the Photogrammetry,<br />

Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-1/W1, pp. 627-633.<br />

Newcombe, R., Izadi, S., Hilliges, O., Molyneaux, D., Kim, D., Davison, A, Kohli, P.,<br />

Shotton, J., Hodges, S., and Fitzgibbon, A. (2011) KinectFusion: Real-time dense surface<br />

mapping and tracking. In Mixed and augmented reality (ISMAR).<br />

L. Nigro - D. Montanari - A. Guari - M. Tamburrini - P. Izzo - M. Ghayyada - I. Titi -<br />

J. Yasine, "New archaeological features in Bethlehem (Palestine): the Italian-Palestinian<br />

rescue season of November 2016": Vicino Oriente XXI (<strong>2017</strong>), pp. 5-57.<br />

Pekel, J.-F., Cottam, A., Gorelick, N. and Belward, A. S., 2016. “High-resolution mapping<br />

of global surface water and its longterm changes”. Nature 540(7633), pp.<br />

418–422.<br />

Ravanelli, R., Di Rita, M., Nascetti, A., Crespi, M., Nigro, L., Montanari, D. and Spagnoli,<br />

F. (<strong>2017</strong>a). Penguin 3.0 - Capturing Small Finds in 3D. Mediterranean Archaeology<br />

and Archaeometry, Vol. 17, No 2, (<strong>2017</strong>), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.581720 (in press).<br />

Ravanelli, R., Nascetti, A. and Crespi, M. (2016). Kinect v2 and RGB Stereo Cameras<br />

Integration for Depth Map Enhancement. International Archives of the Photogrammetry,<br />

Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLI-B5, pp. 699-702.<br />

Ravanelli, R., Nascetti, A., Di Rita, M., Belloni, V., Mattei, D., Nisticò, N., Crespi, M.<br />

(<strong>2017</strong>b). A New Digital Image Correlation Software for Displacements Field Measurement<br />

in Structural Applications. International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote<br />

Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-4/V2, pp. 139-145.<br />

Ravanelli, R., Nascetti, A., Di Rita, M., Nigro, L., Montanari, D., Spagnoli, F. and Crespi,<br />

M. (<strong>2017</strong>c). 3D modelling of archaeological small finds by a low-cost range camera: methodology<br />

and first results. International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing<br />

and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XLII-5/W1, pp. 589 -592.<br />

Sansò, F. Sciences, Volume XLII-5/W1, pp. 589 -592. Crespi, M. (2015). Geodesy and<br />

Geomatics to the edge - Foreword, M. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei (2015) 26 (Suppl 1): 1.<br />

doi:10.1007/s12210-015-0433-2.<br />

Tesolin, F., Vitti, A. and Mazzoni, A. (<strong>2017</strong>). Variometric approach for displacement analysis<br />

using Galileo data: first results. Geophysical Research Abstracts Vol. 19, EGU<strong>2017</strong>-<br />

5195, <strong>2017</strong> EGU General Assembly <strong>2017</strong>.<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

Nowadays, the increasing availability of low-cost sensors, Free and Open Source Software<br />

and High Performance Computing infrastructures allows Geomatics to widen its<br />

application scope, by stimulating new challenging investigations related to the modeling<br />

of the observations provided by these new tools.<br />

In this review, some methodologies and applications, developed at the Geodesy and<br />

Geomatics Division (DICEA) of University of Rome “La Sapienza”, are shortly presented.<br />

Directly related to the mentioned software and hardware new availability, they<br />

are already ready for industrial applications and hopefully can broaden the interaction<br />

between Geomatics and other scientific and technological disciplines.<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

Geomatics; Low-cost Sensors; Open Source Software; GeoBigData infrastructures<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Roberta Ravanelli, roberta.ravanelli@uniroma1.it<br />

Martina Di Rita, martina.dirita@uniroma1.it<br />

Valeria Belloni, belloni.1489430@studenti.uniroma1.it<br />

Andrea Nascetti , Andrea.nascetti@uniroma1.it<br />

Augusto Mazzoni, Augusto.mazzoni@uniroma1.it<br />

Mattia Crespi, Mattia.crespi@uniroma1.it<br />

Geodesy and Geomatics Division - DICEA - University of Rome “La Sapienza”<br />

via Eudossiana, 18 - 00184 Rome, Italy<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 11<br />

View publication stats


FOCUS<br />

Emerging Technologies: the digital<br />

revolution around and above us<br />

by Marco Lisi<br />

Fig. 1 - GNSS Multi-Constellation Scenario<br />

The article describes the<br />

main trends which are at the<br />

basis of the digital revolution<br />

affecting our society.<br />

Internet of Things (IoT),<br />

broadband and ubiquitous<br />

wireless communications<br />

(5G), ubiquitous Positioning,<br />

Navigation and Timing (PNT):<br />

they are different facets of the<br />

“New Digital World” ahead of<br />

us, characterized on one side by<br />

the integration and fusion of<br />

different technologies, aiming<br />

at a new, enhanced representation<br />

of our physical world; on<br />

the other side by a progressive<br />

dematerialization of products<br />

and by their transformation in<br />

services.<br />

This epochal process will also<br />

require a change in the way<br />

we approach engineering: a<br />

more systemic, concurrent and<br />

through-life perspective.<br />

We are at the dawn of the discovery<br />

of a “New World”: not<br />

a virtual one, but the digital<br />

representation, in all its minute<br />

details, of our physical world,<br />

of planet Earth. But also the<br />

world of manufacturing is going<br />

to be radically transformed,<br />

both in terms of organizational<br />

paradigms (Industry 4.0) and in<br />

terms of radically new technologies<br />

(Additive Manufacturing).<br />

This epochal transition is being<br />

triggered by four main technological<br />

trends:<br />

1. Ubiquitous Localization and<br />

Timing: Global Navigation<br />

Satellite Systems and<br />

other similar Positioning,<br />

Navigation and Timing<br />

(PNT) infrastructures make<br />

possible a very accurate localization<br />

in space and time<br />

of both people and things;<br />

2. Ubiquitous Sensing: from 1<br />

to 10 trillion sensors will be<br />

connected to Internet in the<br />

next decade (a minimum of<br />

140 sensors for every human<br />

being on the planet;<br />

3. Ubiquitous Connectivity:<br />

2.3 billion mobile broadband<br />

devices and 7 billion mobile<br />

cellular device in 2014. In<br />

the next years 5G will dramatically<br />

increase both connectivity<br />

and data rates;<br />

4. Progressive and ever detailed<br />

3D modeling of our surroundings.<br />

Enormous amounts of data are<br />

being collected daily and at an<br />

exponentially increasing rate.<br />

99% of them is digitized and<br />

50% has an associated IP address.<br />

We are practically going for a<br />

detailed digital representation<br />

of the world around us. It is an<br />

entirely New World we are facing,<br />

but we have not learnt yet<br />

how to navigate and explore it.<br />

Ubiquitous Localization and<br />

Timing<br />

Global Navigation Satellite<br />

Systems, such as GPS,<br />

GLONASS, Galileo and<br />

Beidou, constitute together a<br />

potentially interoperable and<br />

coordinated infrastructure,<br />

supporting in a vital way most<br />

industrial and economic aspects<br />

of our society (fig. 1).<br />

GPS in particular is nowadays<br />

considered a worldwide utility,<br />

tightly interconnected with all<br />

other critical infrastructures,<br />

from electric power distribution<br />

systems to air traffic management<br />

systems, from railways to<br />

water and oil piping networks.<br />

In the mind of the average user<br />

(but also in that of many engineers)<br />

the main contribution<br />

of GNSS’s, their true “raison<br />

d’être”, is in providing one’s accurate<br />

position and in allowing<br />

a reliable navigation, be it by<br />

Fig. 2 - the global PNT infrastructure.<br />

12 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

car, by airplane, by train or by<br />

boat.<br />

Precise timing is understood,<br />

at least by engineers, as an enabling<br />

feature of GNSS’s and a<br />

very useful by-product, after<br />

positioning and navigation.<br />

The reality, as shown by studies<br />

performed e.g. by the US<br />

Department of Homeland<br />

Security (DHS), is that in fact<br />

timing is the most strategic and<br />

essential of the services offered<br />

by GNSS’s, and the one most<br />

affecting all critical infrastructures<br />

of our society.<br />

Non-GNSS PNT systems and<br />

technologies are also being developed<br />

worldwide.<br />

In the not so far future, a PNT<br />

system of systems, including<br />

GNSS and non-GNSS infrastructures,<br />

is likely to take<br />

place, while, at user receiver level,<br />

a fusion of data from GNSS<br />

and other sensors (such as inertial<br />

platforms, Wi-Fi, GSM,<br />

signals of opportunity, etc.) will<br />

become normal practice (fig. 2).<br />

Data deriving from different<br />

systems and platforms will<br />

be seamlessly “fused” at user<br />

receiver level, guaranteeing a<br />

high degree of availability and<br />

continuity.<br />

Ubiquitous Sensing<br />

(Internet of Things)<br />

The Internet of Things (IoT)<br />

envisions many billions of<br />

Internet-connected objects<br />

(ICOs) or "things" that can<br />

sense, communicate, compute,<br />

and potentially actuate, as well<br />

as have intelligence, multimodal<br />

interfaces, physical/virtual identities,<br />

and attributes.<br />

The IoT is likely to revolutionize<br />

all aspects of our society and<br />

daily life (fig. 3).<br />

Its exponential growth will<br />

actually imply the practical<br />

feasibility of an Ubiquitous<br />

Sensing: from 1 to 10 trillion<br />

sensors will be connected<br />

to Internet in the next decade<br />

(a minimum of 140 sensors<br />

for every human being on the<br />

planet).<br />

Ubiquitous sensing, or ubiquitous<br />

“geo”-sensing to emphasize<br />

the spatial dimension, as deriving<br />

from IoT and from mobile<br />

broadband communications,<br />

will mean that we will be able<br />

to probe, even in real time,<br />

the phenomena around us, the<br />

surrounding reality, with capabilities<br />

far beyond those made<br />

so far available by our senses.<br />

Enormous amounts of data will<br />

be available for our analyses, all<br />

of them referenced in space and<br />

time.<br />

Fig. 3 - IoT impacts on business and society<br />

Ubiquitous Connectivity (5G)<br />

5G, the forth coming wave in<br />

mobile communications, will<br />

realize a quantum leap towards<br />

the goal of ubiquitous connectivity<br />

(fig. 4).<br />

As a matter of fact, 5G will not<br />

simply extend in a linear way<br />

the capabilities of the previous<br />

four generations of mobile<br />

networks. Its dramatically enhanced<br />

performance in terms<br />

of flexibility and throughput<br />

will make fully feasible those<br />

“smart” applications and infrastructures<br />

that require networking,<br />

high data rates, real<br />

time processing. It is evident<br />

how 5G will become the natural<br />

complement of the IoT, its<br />

technological enabler (fig. 5).<br />

Fig. 4 - 5G infrastructure architecture.<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 13


FOCUS<br />

Fig. 5 - 5G and the Internet of Things.<br />

Additive Manufacturing (3D<br />

Printing)<br />

Additive Manufacturing (AM,<br />

also known as “3D Print)<br />

enables the fabrication of objects<br />

through the deposition<br />

of material in order to obtain<br />

fit-for-purpose hardware, as<br />

opposed to traditional subtractive<br />

processes, where material<br />

is removed from larger, semifinished<br />

products (fig. 6).<br />

Like many new manufacturing<br />

processes, 3D printing arose<br />

from the merging of previously<br />

existing technologies: the<br />

coming together of Computer<br />

Aided Design (CAD), inkjet<br />

nozzles and automated machine<br />

systems.<br />

AM includes a large family<br />

of processes and technologies<br />

Fig. 6 - 3D printer at work<br />

and can be applied to a wide<br />

range of materials ranging from<br />

metals, polymers and ceramics<br />

but also food, living cells and<br />

organs.<br />

Today, AM is a standard manufacturing<br />

process in a significant<br />

number of industrial applications<br />

and high potential is<br />

anticipated (and in many cases<br />

already demonstrated) in high<br />

end technology sectors, including<br />

aerospace, turbine industries<br />

and medical applications.<br />

The increasing availability, at<br />

affordable prices, of 3D printers<br />

for personal use, is likely<br />

to revolutionize the world of<br />

manufacturing as well as that of<br />

retail commerce of goods: in a<br />

not so far future (applications<br />

are already available on the<br />

Web) people, by clicking on a<br />

specific product in a specialized<br />

catalog online, will purchase<br />

and download digital files allowing<br />

the manufacturing of<br />

chosen products at their own<br />

premises, with their personal<br />

3D printers.<br />

In this way, the progressive<br />

dematerialization of products,<br />

that has already conquered the<br />

music and books markets, will<br />

further extend to many other<br />

consumer goods, such as, e.g.,<br />

housewares, toys and tools.<br />

As a matter of fact, in the future<br />

we will be exchanging and<br />

trading not physical goods,<br />

but rather their Intellectual<br />

Property Rights (IPR’s).<br />

Autonomous Driving<br />

Significant advancements in<br />

satellite-based positioning are<br />

contributing to the development<br />

of better transport services<br />

and new applications for safe<br />

transport and smart mobility.<br />

With its flexibility, fast growing<br />

capability, low infrastructure<br />

costs and long-term sustainable<br />

use, GNSS is an important<br />

asset in the design of new<br />

Intelligent Transport System<br />

(ITS) infrastructures.<br />

Smart mobility applications<br />

improve the efficiency, effectiveness<br />

and comfort of road<br />

transport through:<br />

• Navigation, the most widespread<br />

application, provides<br />

turn-by-turn information to<br />

drivers via portable navigation<br />

devices (PNDs) and invehicle<br />

systems (IVS).<br />

• Fleet management on-board<br />

units (OBUs) transmit GNSS<br />

positioning information<br />

through telematics to support<br />

transport operators in monitoring<br />

the performance of<br />

logistic activities.<br />

• Road traffic monitoring<br />

services collect floating car<br />

location data from vehicles<br />

through PNDs, IVS and mobile<br />

devices to be processed<br />

and distributed to users and<br />

other interested parties.<br />

Safety-critical applications leverage<br />

precise, reliable and secure<br />

positioning in situations posing<br />

potential harm to humans or<br />

damage to a system/environment:<br />

• Advanced Driver Assistance<br />

Systems (ADAS) support the<br />

14 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

Fig. 7 - Autonomous Driving.<br />

Fig. 8 - Technology adoption curves.<br />

driver during the driving process<br />

and act as a first stepping<br />

stone towards Autonomous<br />

Vehicles.<br />

• In cooperative ITS and<br />

connected vehicles, GNSS<br />

positioning is a key element<br />

for providing situational<br />

awareness through vehicleto-vehicle<br />

(V2V) and vehicleto-infrastructure<br />

(V2I) communications,<br />

enhancing the<br />

safety and comfort of the<br />

driver.<br />

• Dangerous goods can be<br />

tracked by transmitting<br />

GNSS-based positioning data<br />

on the vehicles carrying them,<br />

along with other information<br />

about the status of the cargo.<br />

Liability- and payment-critical<br />

applications can have significant<br />

legal or economic consequences<br />

depending on positioning data:<br />

• In Road User Charging<br />

(RUC), GNSS-based solutions<br />

are designed to charge<br />

motorists for the actual distance<br />

travelled, without barriers<br />

or gantries, and provide<br />

interoperability between national<br />

cross-border schemes.<br />

• In Pay-As-You-Drive<br />

(PAYD), insurance telematics<br />

rely on GNSS data to increase<br />

the fairness of motor insurance<br />

for both insurers and<br />

subscribers.<br />

Regulated applications apply<br />

the transport policies introduced<br />

by national and international<br />

legislation:<br />

• GNSS-enabled IVS are used<br />

in the pan-European eCall,<br />

which accelerates emergency<br />

assistance to drivers and passengers<br />

by sending an emergency<br />

call to 112 and also<br />

providing positioning information<br />

in the unlucky event<br />

Fig. 9 - The Moon Village<br />

of accident.<br />

• Smart tachographs leverage<br />

GNSS positioning to support<br />

road enforcers, recording the<br />

position of a given vehicle at<br />

different points during the<br />

working day.<br />

The emerging technology that<br />

is going to act more disruptively<br />

in our everyday lives, showing<br />

in a most evident way how the<br />

fusion of other technologies can<br />

make new services available, is<br />

Autonomous Driving (fig. 7).<br />

Autonomous vehicles can take<br />

over activities traditionally performed<br />

by the driver, thanks<br />

to their ability to sense the environment,<br />

navigate and com-<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 15


FOCUS<br />

municate with other vehicles<br />

and road infrastructure when<br />

combined with connected vehicle<br />

solutions. Widespread adoption<br />

of autonomous driving can<br />

reduce traffic accidents, reduce<br />

fuel consumption and improve<br />

traffic flow, as well as improve<br />

driver comfort.<br />

Autonomous vehicles are enabled<br />

by the combination of different<br />

technologies and sensors,<br />

allowing the IVS to identify the<br />

optimal path of action.<br />

The adoption of Autonomous<br />

Driving is going to happen<br />

much faster than everyone<br />

thinks, following adoption<br />

curves closer to those typical for<br />

digital technologies, rather than<br />

to those typical for transportation<br />

systems (fig. 8).<br />

In other words, while cars took<br />

decades to be widely adopted,<br />

Autonomous Driving will have<br />

a worldwide spread in just a few<br />

years.<br />

Many believe that Autonomous<br />

Driving will probably be the<br />

single largest societal change<br />

after the Internet. One thing is<br />

for sure: Autonomous Driving<br />

will destroy the traditional<br />

concept of the car as a personal<br />

good to be owned, moving to<br />

the paradigm of transportation<br />

Fig. 10 - Moon Communications and PNT infrastructure.<br />

as a service and hence confirming<br />

the transition from products<br />

to services mentioned in<br />

the introduction.<br />

Emerging Technologies in<br />

Space<br />

The Director General of ESA,<br />

prof. Woerner, set forth the<br />

idea of a “Moon Village”, a village<br />

on the moon built by huge<br />

3D printers and inhabited for<br />

months at a time by teams of<br />

astronauts. The plan outlined<br />

by the ESA is that, starting<br />

from the early 2020s, robots<br />

will be sent to the Moon to begin<br />

constructing various facilities,<br />

followed a few years later<br />

by the first inhabitants (fig. 9).<br />

Back in 2013, ESA teamed up<br />

with building companies to<br />

start testing out various Moon<br />

base-building technologies, and<br />

determined that local materials<br />

would be the best for constructing<br />

buildings and other<br />

structures, which means no<br />

need for transporting resources<br />

from Earth at an astronomical<br />

cost. But the problems to<br />

be solved for the realization<br />

of such stable manned infrastructure<br />

on the Moon (a true<br />

follow-on of the International<br />

Space Station) involve much<br />

more than just building technologies.<br />

The Moon Village will<br />

be a large and complex system<br />

where requirements related to<br />

operations and safety of life will<br />

be of paramount importance.<br />

Moreover, from an architectural<br />

viewpoint the “village” will have<br />

to be expandable and “open”<br />

to the integration with other<br />

systems, hence integrability<br />

and expandability will be two<br />

key issues. But first and above<br />

all, the Moon Village will have<br />

to be affordable and sustainable,<br />

i.e., its cost will need to<br />

be assessed over its life-cycle.<br />

As a “Wild West” town in the<br />

old times, “Moon Village” will<br />

have to provide a number of<br />

essential infrastructures. In particular,<br />

the exploration of the<br />

Moon with human and robotic<br />

missions and its colonization,<br />

through the establishment of<br />

permanent bases, will require<br />

planetary communications and<br />

navigation infrastructures.<br />

Even in space, emerging communications<br />

(5G) and PNT<br />

technologies will provide reliable<br />

and affordable solutions<br />

for a communications and navigation<br />

infrastructure (fig. 10).<br />

Conclusion<br />

Ubiquitous Localization and<br />

Timing, Ubiquitous Sensing,<br />

Ubiquitous Connectivity, 3D<br />

Digital Modeling: these four<br />

main technological trends are<br />

triggering an epochal transition<br />

in the history of mankind,<br />

characterized by an increasing<br />

predominance of services in our<br />

economy.<br />

We are practically going for a<br />

detailed digital mapping of the<br />

world around us, for an evolution<br />

of reality as we can sense<br />

it today towards an enriched,<br />

augmented reality.<br />

It is an entirely New World we<br />

are facing, but we have not yet<br />

learnt how to navigate and explore<br />

it.<br />

16 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


FOCUS<br />

Moreover, the emerging technologies<br />

will cause radical transformations<br />

of our society, such<br />

as those related to Autonomous<br />

Driving.<br />

Our space exploration activities<br />

are also going to be affected, a<br />

good example being ESA’s vision<br />

of a Moon Village, a stable<br />

base on our natural satellite<br />

from which to start the commercialization<br />

of Space.<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

Ubiquitous Localization and Timing, Ubiquitous<br />

Sensing, Ubiquitous Connectivity, 3D Digital Modeling:<br />

these four main technological trends are<br />

triggering an epochal transition in the history of<br />

mankind, characterized by an increasing predominance<br />

of services in our economy.<br />

These emerging technologies will cause radical<br />

transformations of our society: it is an entirely New<br />

World we are facing<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

Digital era; technological trend; GNSS; PNT;<br />

5G; autonomous driving; 3D modeling; Galileo;<br />

Additive Manufacturing; IoT<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Dr. ing. Marco Lisi<br />

marco.lisi@esa.int<br />

European Space Agency<br />

Keplerlaan 1, 2200AG Noordwijk,<br />

The Netherlands<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 17


REPORT<br />

Improving Resilience to Emergencies<br />

through Advanced Cyber<br />

Technologies: the I-REACT project<br />

by Claudia Maltoni, Claudio Rossi,<br />

Guzmán Sánchez<br />

Society as a whole is increasingly<br />

exposed and vulnerable to natural<br />

disasters because extreme<br />

weather events, exacerbated by<br />

climate change, are becoming<br />

more frequent and longer. In<br />

this context, the access to an<br />

integrated system providing the<br />

main emergency management<br />

Fig. 1 - The I-REACT project integrates a large number of data sources to fight disasters.<br />

information and data coming from<br />

multiple sources is even more<br />

critical to successful disaster risk<br />

management.<br />

In the last ten years, natural<br />

hazards 1 have caused 2 billion<br />

causalities and costed<br />

up to $1.4 trillion worldwide,<br />

as registered in the Emergency<br />

Events Database (EM-DAT,<br />

<strong>2017</strong>). In Europe, disasters<br />

caused around 7 million causalities<br />

and up to €113 billion of<br />

overall economic losses in the<br />

decade 2007-<strong>2017</strong>. In this period,<br />

flood is the biggest hazard<br />

in terms of occurrence, affected<br />

people and economic damage<br />

in Europe, while the deadliest<br />

hazard remains extreme temperature,<br />

followed by flood and<br />

earthquake. Wildfires are less<br />

impacting; however, it ranks<br />

second in affected people.<br />

Worryingly, extreme weather<br />

events will be even more frequent<br />

and last longer in the<br />

future, mainly due to climate<br />

change. Greater evaporation<br />

will lead to increased water<br />

vapour in the atmosphere,<br />

producing more intense precipitation.<br />

This, together with<br />

rapid snow melting, intensifies<br />

the likelihood of floods.<br />

Also, higher temperatures<br />

will increase the frequency of<br />

wildfires as well as other natural<br />

disasters. According to the<br />

Intergovernmental Panel on<br />

Climate Change (IPCC, 2013),<br />

the surface temperature is projected<br />

to rise over the 21st century<br />

under all assessed emission<br />

scenarios.<br />

The European Commission's<br />

Humanitarian Aid and<br />

Civil Protection department<br />

(ECHO) and the Federal<br />

Emergency Management<br />

Agency (FEMA) of the United<br />

States agree upon the need to<br />

invest in disaster prevention.<br />

One of the key message in the<br />

<strong>2017</strong> ECHO Factsheet stats<br />

that “for every €1 invested in<br />

disaster prevention, €4 to €7<br />

are saved in disaster response”<br />

(ECHO, <strong>2017</strong>). According to<br />

the “Nature Climate Change”<br />

journal, improving flood defences<br />

across the EU to prevent<br />

100-year flood would save €7<br />

billion a year by 2050 but cost<br />

only €1.75 billion to implement<br />

(Jongman, 2014).<br />

Despite that, current systems<br />

for risk management are still<br />

limited in their effectiveness.<br />

Even if technological progresses<br />

are registered and large amounts<br />

of data are available, there is<br />

no platform that integrates and<br />

analyses in real time all the useful<br />

data to improve prediction<br />

and management of natural<br />

disasters. On the other hand,<br />

the need for systematic data for<br />

disaster mitigation and prevention<br />

is an increasing concern for<br />

both development and response<br />

agencies. In the past, data needs<br />

18 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

Fig. 2: The I-REACT partners, advisors and end-users at the International User Requirements Workshop (IURW)<br />

were addressed on an ad hoc<br />

basis, which included collecting<br />

the information at the time of<br />

the emergency. However, there<br />

is a growing understanding that<br />

data collection, analysis, and<br />

management can help both<br />

short and long-term development<br />

goals and support to<br />

identify and address disaster<br />

risks. The I-REACT project has<br />

been conceived in this context,<br />

considering that “you cannot<br />

manage what you cannot measure”,<br />

as stated by Margareta<br />

Wahlström, the United Nations<br />

Special Representative of the<br />

Secretary-General for Disaster<br />

Risk Reduction.<br />

The project: I-REACT in brief<br />

I-REACT (Improving<br />

Resilience to Emergencies<br />

through Advanced Cyber<br />

Technologies) is a Horizon<br />

2020 3-year project (2016-<br />

2019) funded by the European<br />

Commission under the Secure<br />

Society Work Programme<br />

(DRS-1-2015).<br />

I-REACT integrates existing<br />

services, both local and<br />

European, into a platform that<br />

supports the entire emergency<br />

management cycle. In particular,<br />

I-REACT will implement a<br />

multi-hazard system with a focus<br />

on floods, fires and extreme<br />

weather events, as they are the<br />

most impacting natural hazards<br />

driven by climate change.<br />

To reach this objective,<br />

I-REACT brings together a<br />

multidisciplinary team of 20<br />

European partners. From researchers<br />

and technologists to<br />

industry leaders, UN officials,<br />

consultants or communicators,<br />

these partners are working<br />

collaboratively on the<br />

different tasks of the project<br />

providing their experience<br />

and expertise to generate the<br />

best solution against disasters.<br />

The project is coordinated by<br />

the Istituto Superiore Mario<br />

Boella of Turin. Consortium<br />

partners include: Geoville,<br />

Eoxplore, Terranea, Alpha<br />

Consult, UNESCO (Regional<br />

Bureau for Science and<br />

Culture in Europe, Venice),<br />

Politecnico di Torino, Celi,<br />

JoinPad, Fondazione Bruno<br />

Kessler, Finnish Meteorological<br />

Institute, Meteosim, Bitgear,<br />

Ansur Technologies, Technical<br />

University of Vienna,<br />

Scienseed, CSI Piemonte,<br />

Aquobex, Answaretech, and<br />

Joint Research Centre (JRC) of<br />

the European Commission.<br />

The project will broaden the<br />

scope of its predecessor, a<br />

FP7-funded initiative named<br />

“Integrating GMES Emergency<br />

Services with satellite navigation<br />

and communication for<br />

establishing a flood information<br />

service” (FLOODIS 2 ),<br />

which already involved some of<br />

I-REACT partners. Ended in<br />

2015, FLOODIS focused on<br />

implementing a crowd-sourcing<br />

approach to support the emergency<br />

response in case of floods<br />

with dedicated demonstrations<br />

carried out in Italy and<br />

Fig. 3 - The project empowers different stakeholders with several new technologies and essential information<br />

to improve the fight against disasters.<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 19


REPORT<br />

in Albania. FLOODIS implemented<br />

a smartphone application<br />

to collect real-time reports<br />

from both citizens and civil<br />

protection agents, and to provide<br />

short and long-term projections<br />

of the flood extent for<br />

supporting in-field emergency<br />

rescue units. I-REACT extends<br />

this approach, multiplying the<br />

opportunities and serving as a<br />

tool during all the three emergency<br />

management phases, i.e.<br />

prevention, preparedness and<br />

response phases.<br />

The first one mainly deals with<br />

the preparation of a community<br />

to eliminate or reduce the impact<br />

of future disasters. For this,<br />

the I-REACT platform will<br />

integrate historical data, realtime<br />

reports, weather data and<br />

satellites observations to derive<br />

detailed statistics and accurate<br />

risk maps. These maps, coupled<br />

with a decision support system,<br />

will allow decision makers to effectively<br />

plan prevention measures<br />

aimed at increasing the<br />

resilience to future disasters.<br />

The second is the preparedness<br />

phase. During this phase, the<br />

coordination between governments,<br />

civil organizations and<br />

citizens will be promoted to be<br />

prepared in case of an emergency.<br />

To reach this objective,<br />

I-REACT will analyse weather<br />

Fig. 4 - The I-REACT workflow infographics.<br />

forecasts, data from both local<br />

and European early warning<br />

systems, such as the European<br />

Flood Awareness System<br />

(EFAS) and the European<br />

Forest Fire Information<br />

(EFFIS), and warnings extracted<br />

from social media or<br />

received through crowdsourced<br />

reports from authorities and<br />

citizens, as well as using the<br />

I-REACT mobile application.<br />

The third one is the emergency<br />

response phase, in which an<br />

effective reaction, first aid and<br />

evacuation are crucial. To help<br />

on-site operators, I-REACT<br />

will allow to get a quick and<br />

complete operational picture<br />

thanks to the ingestion of realtime<br />

reporting (from mobile<br />

phones or wearable devices)<br />

and its integration in nowcast<br />

and forecast models. To improve<br />

self-protection behaviour<br />

and reduce exposure, I-REACT<br />

will support public authorities<br />

to immediately warn citizens<br />

with real-time information and<br />

instructions.<br />

Where we are: I-REACT at its<br />

second year<br />

The project officially started at<br />

the beginning of June 2016 and<br />

it is now entering its second<br />

year.<br />

The innovation design phase,<br />

based on a user-centred design<br />

and including the requirement<br />

definition, is concluded.<br />

Within this activity, the international<br />

workshop “Increasing<br />

Resilience to Natural hazards<br />

through Information and<br />

Communication Technology”<br />

was organised on 14-15<br />

September 2016 at UNESCO<br />

Headquarters in Paris. It<br />

brought together policy-makers,<br />

emergency service providers and<br />

science and technology experts<br />

from different European countries.<br />

The workshop aimed at<br />

gathering their needs, assess the<br />

implementation gaps in their<br />

operational procedures, and<br />

co-design some key features of<br />

the I-REACT system, e.g. the<br />

data collection and visualization<br />

process. Also, a survey to gain<br />

knowledge on citizen’s perception<br />

of risks was launched. The<br />

results have been used to design<br />

tips and quizzes that will be<br />

inserted in the mobile application<br />

to improve citizen’s risk<br />

awareness in all phases of the<br />

emergency.<br />

The three main technical work<br />

packages, based on a “Plan-<br />

Do-Test” agile approach, are<br />

still on-going. More in detail,<br />

they foresee the integration of<br />

external services and data, such<br />

as the Copernicus Emergency<br />

Management Service (EMS),<br />

open data, Sentinel satellites,<br />

EGNSS and historical information.<br />

At the same time,<br />

up to March 2018, the team<br />

will deliver all main models<br />

of I-REACT (modelling and<br />

engines), including weather<br />

and climate forecasts, extreme<br />

weather event detection, flood<br />

and fire nowcast and forecast,<br />

risk forecasts, and a social media<br />

data engine. Last, but not<br />

least, the service oriented architecture<br />

stage has started, which<br />

is aimed at the implementation<br />

of the centralized system archi-<br />

20 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

tecture and of all in-filed technologies<br />

for data collection.<br />

Since June <strong>2017</strong>, the team is<br />

approaching other two main<br />

activities. First of all, to achieve<br />

a full system integration and<br />

consolidate the performance of<br />

the I-REACT solution, simulations<br />

and direct involvement<br />

of end-users and emergency<br />

responders are foreseen during<br />

the validation and demonstration<br />

phase. At the moment,<br />

five demonstrations (in Italy,<br />

Spain, Finland, UK, Malta)<br />

have been planned. After each<br />

demonstration, a user workshop<br />

will be organized to gather<br />

feedback that will be used to<br />

improve (tune) the system.<br />

Second, the business assessment<br />

and exploitation phase recently<br />

kicked-off, including a costsbenefits<br />

analysis, business plan,<br />

implementation roadmap and<br />

exploitation activities aimed<br />

at assessing I-REACT socioeconomic<br />

impact and preparing<br />

its roll-out.<br />

The project workflow is completed<br />

by the overall project<br />

management and the dissemination,<br />

communication and<br />

engagement phase, both lasting<br />

for the overall project duration.<br />

Thanks to this second activity,<br />

I-REACT is now present<br />

in different on-line channels<br />

(e.g. website, Facebook, Twitter,<br />

YouTube) and promoted<br />

through several materials (e.g.<br />

videos, infographics).<br />

Where we want to be:<br />

I-REACT final goal<br />

“By 2018, I-REACT will implement<br />

a European-wide platform<br />

that integrates emergency<br />

management data coming<br />

from multiple sources. In this<br />

way, we will be able to produce<br />

information faster and allow<br />

citizens, civil protection services<br />

and policymakers to effectively<br />

react to natural disasters and<br />

Fig. 5 - 3D model of the fisrt responder's wearable for improved positioning and environmental sensing.<br />

mitigate their impact on the<br />

society”, says Claudio Rossi,<br />

Project Manager at ISMB,<br />

who is in charge of the project<br />

management and the technical<br />

coordination. How?<br />

Leveraging on innovative cyber<br />

technologies and ICT systems,<br />

the I-REACT platform will be<br />

designed as an articulated and<br />

modular system based on different<br />

components. As mentioned<br />

before, it will integrate many<br />

different information sources,<br />

including Copernicus EMS<br />

maps, early warnings from the<br />

EFAS and EFFIS, satellite data<br />

(Sentinel), social media streams<br />

and crowdsourced information<br />

from emergency responders<br />

and citizens. All this information<br />

will be merged to provide<br />

added-value products, such as<br />

a decision-support system for<br />

authorities and an app for citizens.<br />

Also, wearable devices and<br />

smart glasses will be provided<br />

to first-responders, who will<br />

benefit from high-precision<br />

positioning thanks to Galileo<br />

and EGNOS and Augmented<br />

Reality to make hands-free reports.<br />

Thanks to this architecture,<br />

I-REACT will be able to provide<br />

greater emergency anticipation<br />

through accurate weather<br />

forecasts that, coupled with<br />

historical knowledge, satellite<br />

and risk maps, crowdsourced<br />

reports, and social media information<br />

will allow to better anticipate<br />

extreme weather events,<br />

floods, and fire. The modularity<br />

of the system, and its interoperability<br />

with existing systems,<br />

will allow a strong flexibility of<br />

the platform in terms of future<br />

exploitation, making it able<br />

to answer to different market<br />

needs.<br />

Our target: I-REACT as a<br />

multi-user platform<br />

“At I-REACT we want to<br />

gather all the participants involved<br />

in the different phases<br />

of the emergency management,<br />

to translate their needs and<br />

ideas into effective solutions<br />

with a real social impact. We<br />

collaborate with groups of end<br />

users that will benefit from the<br />

I-REACT technology and can<br />

provide first-hand experience.<br />

We also have a strong advisory<br />

board that provides valuable<br />

counselling and support” explains<br />

Claudia Maltoni, Project<br />

Manager at Alpha Consult, the<br />

SME in charge of project business<br />

assessment and exploitation.<br />

Even if mainly addressing<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 21


REPORT<br />

emergency management, the<br />

proposed system has been conceived<br />

as a multi-user platform<br />

as well. It mainly targets public<br />

administration authorities, but<br />

also private companies, as well<br />

as citizens in order to provide<br />

increased resilience to natural<br />

disasters.<br />

A Costs-Benefits Analysis<br />

(CBA) conducted by ALPHA<br />

Consult during the FLOODIS<br />

project and based on tests undertaken<br />

together with Civil<br />

Protections, namely in Veneto<br />

Region and Albania, provides<br />

some interesting preliminary<br />

inputs. Key impacts 3 has been<br />

described and quantified with<br />

respect to the functionalities of<br />

the system for both emergency<br />

managers and the society as a<br />

whole. Specifically, in the two<br />

case studies 4 , a final saving of<br />

c. €15,8 million for Albania<br />

and €1,9 million for Treviso<br />

could have been achieved, in<br />

case of having FLOODIS in<br />

place. These benefits are mainly<br />

driven by decreasing costs for<br />

emergency management operations,<br />

less damages to productive<br />

sectors, assets, properties<br />

and infrastructures, together<br />

with a reduction of affected<br />

people. It is worth noting that<br />

these estimations are not negligible.<br />

As a consequence of<br />

the overall project results and<br />

impact assessment, FLOODIS<br />

has been finally integrated with<br />

DEWETRA, a real-time system<br />

for hydro-meteorological and<br />

wildfire risk forecasting, monitoring<br />

and prevention in use in<br />

Albania. At the same time, these<br />

impacts are clearly conservative<br />

with respect to the much higher<br />

potential of I-REACT.<br />

Besides the benefits brought<br />

by the proposed solution to organisations<br />

in charge of disaster<br />

management, governments and<br />

society as a whole, I-REACT<br />

could foster market growth and<br />

produce impacts for other private<br />

stakeholders, such as current<br />

system providers, insurance<br />

companies and third parties<br />

with an interest on information<br />

produced by I-REACT. For this<br />

reason, “a set of interviews are<br />

being carried out with different<br />

types of private actors, from<br />

insurance companies to firms<br />

specialised on business continuity<br />

and disaster recovery, in<br />

different countries in Europe<br />

to assess their requirements and<br />

interest in I-REACT. A dedicated<br />

CBA could be undertaken<br />

to quantify potential benefits<br />

also in some relevant private<br />

sectors”, concludes Maltoni.<br />

NOTES<br />

1 Drought, earthquake, extreme temperature, flood,<br />

landslide, storm, volcanic activity, mass movement<br />

and wildfire are considered<br />

2 www.floodis.eu<br />

3 Reduction of costs for emergency management operations,<br />

human losses, affected people, infrastructure<br />

damages and damages to private sector activities, environment,<br />

housing and education buildings and cultural<br />

heritage have been all assessed.<br />

4 The 2015 flood in Albania and water bomb in Treviso.<br />

BIBLIOGRAPHY<br />

Emergency Events Database, EM-DAT, <strong>2017</strong><br />

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013),<br />

Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution<br />

of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report<br />

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC<br />

report.<br />

European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil<br />

Protection department (<strong>2017</strong>), European Disaster Risk<br />

Management, ECHO Factsheet<br />

Brenden Jongman (2014), Increasing stress on disasterrisk<br />

finance due to large floods, Nature Climate Change<br />

journal.<br />

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Disaster<br />

Statistics, UNISDR website.<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

I-REACT; natural hazards; climate change; disaster<br />

management; Copernicus<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

Due to climate change, floods, wildfires and other extreme<br />

weather events are becoming more frequent and<br />

intense. This scenario poses a challenge for current risk<br />

management systems. I-REACT project aims to develop<br />

a solution through the integration and modelling<br />

of data coming multiple sources. Information from European<br />

monitoring systems, earth observations, historical<br />

information and weather forecasts will be combined<br />

with data gathered by new technological developments<br />

created by I-REACT. These include a mobile app and<br />

a social media analysis tool to account for real-time<br />

crowdsourced information, wearables to improve<br />

positioning, as well as augmented reality glasses to facilitate<br />

reporting and information visualisation by first<br />

responders. With this approach, I-REACT will be able<br />

to empower stakeholders in the prevention and management<br />

of disasters. Citizens will be involved in reporting<br />

first-hand information, policymakers will be supported<br />

in the decision-making process, and first responders will<br />

be equipped with essential tools for early warning and<br />

response. At the same time, private companies could<br />

leverage specific set of I-REACT components to improve<br />

their business, when linked to disaster management.<br />

Overall, I-REACT aims to be a European-wide<br />

contribution to build more secure and resilient societies<br />

to disasters.<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Claudia Maltoni<br />

cm@alphacons.eu<br />

Alpha Consult<br />

Claudio Rossi<br />

rossi@ismb.it<br />

Istituto Superiore Mario Boella<br />

Guzmán Sánchez<br />

guzman.sanchez@scienseed.com<br />

Scienseed<br />

22 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


Aeronike introduces City Explorer 3D:<br />

know how e innovation<br />

REPORT<br />

Aeronike, is operating in the aero photogrammetry<br />

market since 1966.<br />

During its 40 years of operations a complete<br />

portfolio of aero surveys activities<br />

and services have been developed, from a<br />

high detailed digital cartography to the<br />

core competence of the 3D restitution of<br />

aerial images.<br />

City Explorer 3D is a technological<br />

platform which integrates a 3D virtual<br />

model with data and aero photogrammetric<br />

surveys from different sources (plane,<br />

drone, terrestrial) to give a tool to public<br />

administration, associations, consortiums<br />

to satisfy their respective specific needs.<br />

With City Explorer 3D the user can experience<br />

an immersive 3D visit to his city or<br />

territory, of a site or monument of<br />

interest. Specific touristic itineraries can<br />

be designed with additional contents as<br />

Multilanguage narrator voice to enter<br />

within the context at 360° with a fly through<br />

approach. (Virtual Tours).<br />

This platform represents a very useful tool<br />

to boost promotional activities and can<br />

be integrated with more standard tools as<br />

paper guides, web site, etc...<br />

The user can access the 3D immersive<br />

virtual tour via WEB, mobile APPs with<br />

devices as Google Cardboard or via<br />

Totem/Monitor Touch Screen which<br />

could be available along different Point of<br />

Information with Virtual and Augmented<br />

Reality integrated contents.<br />

BERLIN<br />

26/28 Sept.<br />

Hall 4.1 | B4033<br />

VISIT US AT INTERGEO <strong>2017</strong><br />

Additional application fields of the 3D Territory Model<br />

Analysis & Planning<br />

Support to Design<br />

4D Analysis<br />

3D environment to build the final design<br />

GIS 3D<br />

Cartography integration<br />

Dimensional checks<br />

CAD BIM models integration<br />

Spatial relation analysis<br />

(void/full report)<br />

Export<br />

to<br />

CAD<br />

format<br />

Cartography obtained from the 3D model<br />

Mock up<br />

Support for environmental impact assessment<br />

Simulations (Hydrogeological, acoustic, CFD)<br />

Street Profiles<br />

www.aeronike.com<br />

Aeronike <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> City Explorer 23D


NEWS<br />

IN THIS PICTURE THERE IS A<br />

MULTITEMPORAL COMBINATION<br />

BETWEEN 2 SCANSAR WIDE<br />

ACQUISITIONS OF THE LARSEN- SEA BY<br />

THE SAME COSMO-SKYMED SATELLITE<br />

WITH ONLY 1 ORBIT DISTANCE (ABOUT 96<br />

MINUTES)<br />

N<br />

24 COSMO-SkyMed <strong>GEOmedia</strong> composite n°3-<strong>2017</strong> image. ASI Agenzia Spaziale Italiana - processed and distributed by e-GEOS


NEWS<br />

e-GEOS, an ASI (20%) / Telespazio (80%) company, is a<br />

leading international player in the Earth Observation and<br />

Geo-Spatial Information business.<br />

e-GEOS is the global distributor for the COSMO-SkyMed<br />

data, the largest and most advanced Radar Satellite<br />

onstellation available today.<br />

e-GEOS offers a unique portfolio of application services,<br />

specially thanks to the superior monitoring capabilities of<br />

COSMO-SkyMed constellation, and has acquired a leading<br />

position within European Copernicus Program.<br />

Covering the whole value chain, from data acquisition to<br />

the generation of analytics reports, e-GEOS is working in<br />

the field of big data analytics based on the integration of<br />

different sources. This approach is one of the key assets<br />

for the new services and products offered by the company.<br />

DEFENCE AND INTELLIGENCE<br />

RISK AND ASSET MANAGEMENT<br />

10+<br />

SATELLITE MISSIONS<br />

DATA ACQUIRED.<br />

750+<br />

MARITIME REPORTS/ YEAR<br />

9+<br />

COMMERCIAL USER TERMINALS<br />

AROUND THE GLOBE<br />

206+<br />

ACTIVATIONS OF THE e-GEOS<br />

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SERVICE<br />

MARITIME SOURVELLIANCE<br />

AND ENVIRONMENTAL MONIOTORING<br />

2500+<br />

MAPS PRODUCED<br />

IN 4 YEARS<br />

70Millions<br />

AGRICULTURAL PARCELS<br />

FORESTRY AND CLIMATE<br />

LAND MANAGEMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURES<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 25


REPORT<br />

The new MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering at Politecnico di Milano<br />

by Ludovico Biagi<br />

This paper describes the first<br />

italian MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering started in 2016 at<br />

Politecnico di Milano.<br />

Fig. 1 - Four examples of Geoinformatics expertizes.<br />

Upper, left. Positioning by GNSS (a GPS III satellite, United States Government).<br />

Upper, right. Analysis of remote sensed images (LandSat multispectral image of Como<br />

lake, GeoLab of Politecnico di Milano). Lower, left. Creation and analysis of digital<br />

elevation models (example of high resolution DEM from LiDAR, GeoLab of Politecnico<br />

di Milano). Lower, right. Advanced environmental analysis (4D modelling of temperatures<br />

in the Mediterranean sea, GeoLab of Politecnico di Milano).<br />

The vision of Digital<br />

Earth was proposed by<br />

Al Gore in 1998 as a<br />

multi-dimensional and multiresolution<br />

model of the planet<br />

to contextualize the huge<br />

amount of spatial information<br />

relating to the physical and<br />

socio-economic environment.<br />

Every day humans generate<br />

more than 2.5 trillion (10 18 )<br />

bytes of data: 80% of them are<br />

spatial data. In the ‘80 of the<br />

last century, first digital spatial<br />

data were acquired by scanning<br />

hardcopy archives; now they are<br />

endlessly acquired in massive<br />

quantities from fixed and mobile<br />

in-situ sensors, from sensors<br />

on satellites, on aircrafts, on<br />

UAVs or on land vehicles, from<br />

digital documents and social<br />

media. Such a massive flow (Big<br />

geodata) generates new challenges<br />

since stored data have to be<br />

analyzed and processed, often<br />

in real-time, to extract information.<br />

Therefore, a new scientific<br />

and technical figure who combines<br />

expertizes in Computer<br />

Science, Environmental<br />

Engineering and Geomatics is<br />

needed.<br />

Geoinformatics engineers are<br />

high level experts in technologies<br />

for measuring, georeferencing,<br />

managing, analyzing,<br />

visualizing and publishing<br />

spatial and time varying information,<br />

with a particular<br />

concern to environmental data.<br />

Geoinformatics engineers will<br />

thus be involved in the design,<br />

implementation and management<br />

of geodata projects to<br />

support the new paradigms<br />

of Participative Digital Earth,<br />

Smart City and Smart Society<br />

as well as a variety of decisions<br />

at regional, country and global<br />

level. Urban and agricultural<br />

land planning, monitoring and<br />

management, infrastructure design<br />

and building information<br />

management, transport and<br />

traffic monitoring and management,<br />

environmental modeling,<br />

geography, Earth sciences are<br />

the main application fields of<br />

Geoinformatics Engineering.<br />

All those fields attain to the general<br />

context of sustainable management<br />

of environment and<br />

land. In Figure 1, few examples<br />

of Geoinformatics expertizes are<br />

shown.<br />

As the academic teaching is<br />

concerned, some universities<br />

in Europe propose courses in<br />

Geoinformatics. In Italy, in<br />

2016 Politecnico di Milano<br />

planned and started the first<br />

Italian MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering.<br />

26 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

The new Master of Sciences<br />

in Geoinformatics Engineering<br />

at Politecnico di Milano<br />

The MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering at Politecnico<br />

di Milano aims at preparing<br />

technicians who possess deep<br />

preparation and strong attitude<br />

to solve problems relevant to<br />

geospatial information. The following<br />

skills are needed on the<br />

methodological and the practical<br />

points of view:<br />

1. spatial information managing:<br />

a. acquisition and georeferencing,<br />

b. analysis, classification and<br />

processing,<br />

c. archiving, representation,<br />

publication and distribution;<br />

2. computer infrastructures:<br />

design and implementation of<br />

infrastructures to<br />

a. acquire, model and analyze<br />

spatial data and phenomena,<br />

b. manage, publish and share<br />

the spatial information;<br />

3. methodologies and instruments<br />

to model and analyze<br />

environmental phenomena;<br />

4. advanced technologies for<br />

Big Geodata and internet of<br />

Places.<br />

The acquisition of these capabilities<br />

requires the knowledge<br />

of all the methodological and<br />

practical topics that allow to<br />

identify, model, and solve the<br />

relevant problems. In particular,<br />

at the end of their Master’s<br />

degree, students must have a<br />

wide knowledge of methods representing<br />

the state of the art of<br />

the discipline. Moreover, they<br />

not only gain the knowledge<br />

but also the habit to autonomously<br />

and creatively face and<br />

solve Geoinformatics problems,<br />

which are often unusual and<br />

new at a level that is both<br />

methodological and practical.<br />

Indeed, a main aim of the<br />

Master is to make students able<br />

to autonomously face cutting<br />

edge and original subjects,<br />

with a pro-active attitude to<br />

problem solution. Accordingly<br />

to this mission, the Master at<br />

Politecnico di Milano has been<br />

designed as follows.<br />

The study programme<br />

The MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering is a two years<br />

international master course<br />

taught in English for Italian<br />

and foreign students. The<br />

study program satisfies both<br />

the Italian Ministerial classes<br />

LM-32 (Computer Science<br />

Engineering) and LM-35<br />

(Environmental and Land management<br />

Engineering). At the<br />

enrollment the student must<br />

choose his Ministerial class: the<br />

choice can be modified during<br />

the first year of study.<br />

Students having mainly a<br />

background in Environmental<br />

Engineering find an introductory<br />

course in Computer<br />

Science, while those with a<br />

computer oriented first level<br />

degree follow a basic course on<br />

Geomatics and Environmental<br />

issues. In the geomatic / environmental<br />

field, the mandatory<br />

courses cover topics such<br />

as Geospatial data analysis,<br />

Geographical Information<br />

Systems (GIS), Positioning and<br />

Location Based Services; in the<br />

Computer Science field, mandatory<br />

courses cover topics like<br />

Databases, Software engineering,<br />

Computer Infrastructures.<br />

In the first year, the plan of<br />

mandatory courses allow the<br />

students to modify the choice<br />

of the Ministerial class. In the<br />

second year, mandatory courses<br />

alternate with elective courses,<br />

that allow students to deepen<br />

their expertise.<br />

Elective courses are specifically<br />

proposed for Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering students. They are<br />

either in computer programming<br />

and computer systems<br />

design, dealing for instance<br />

with multidimensional and<br />

mobile applications; or in environmental<br />

management and<br />

sustainability issues dealing for<br />

instance with Earth observation<br />

techniques and geophysical data<br />

processing.<br />

The ability to autonomously<br />

face problems and implement<br />

solutions is achieved through<br />

laboratories and projects that<br />

are paired to traditional courses<br />

lectures; the final thesis on an<br />

original scientific topic further<br />

stimulates it.<br />

More details are given in the<br />

official study rules that are published<br />

at www.geoinformatics.<br />

polimi.it.<br />

Access requirements<br />

The access to the MSc in<br />

Geoinformatics Engineering<br />

implies prior acquisition of a<br />

Bachelor of Science, obtained<br />

from the Politecnico di Milano<br />

School of Engineering or other<br />

Italian or international universities.<br />

Admissions are evaluated<br />

by a commission, accordingly<br />

to the previous career, the adequacy<br />

of personal preparation<br />

and the knowledge of English.<br />

Access requirements are differentiated<br />

according to the acquired<br />

Bachelor of Science.<br />

Fig. 2 - The logo of the MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering at Politecnico di Milano.<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 27


REPORT<br />

Graduates in Environmental<br />

and Land planning<br />

Engineering, Computer<br />

Science Engineering and other<br />

Engineering courses at the<br />

Politecnico di Milano, must<br />

pass a selection that is based<br />

on results (marks and time<br />

taken) of their Bachelors.<br />

Graduates from other Italian<br />

or international universities<br />

must pass a selection that is<br />

based on the final marks of<br />

the Bachelor of Science degree<br />

together with an analytical<br />

evaluation of their prior curriculum.<br />

A limited enrollment is<br />

planned for the MSc in<br />

Geoinformatics Engineering<br />

at Politecnico di Milano, with<br />

a maximum number of 50<br />

students. In particular, 30<br />

places are reserved for non-EU<br />

students, the remaining 20 are<br />

available for Italian students,<br />

EU students and non-EU students<br />

resident in Italy.<br />

Career perspectives<br />

According to the selected<br />

study track, the graduated<br />

Geoinformatics engineers<br />

can participate to the Italian<br />

state certification exam to<br />

enter either the Civil and<br />

Environmental Engineers’<br />

register (LM-32) or the<br />

Computer science Engineers’<br />

one (LM-35).<br />

Accordingly to the cultural<br />

and technical organization<br />

of our MSc, Geoinformatics<br />

engineers from Politecnico di<br />

Milano find a job where an<br />

Environmental engineer with<br />

strong expertize in Computer<br />

Science is needed, for example,<br />

a technician for the management<br />

and analysis of a network<br />

of environmental sensors. On<br />

the opposite, they find a job<br />

in the branches of Information<br />

Technology finalized to the design<br />

and implementation of<br />

tools for the Environmental<br />

and Land management.<br />

Consequently,<br />

Geoinformatics engineers<br />

find a placement in all the<br />

branches that directly manage<br />

and develop environmental<br />

and spatial information.<br />

Furthermore, nowadays spatial<br />

information is everywhere:<br />

therefore, Geoinformatics<br />

engineers find job also in<br />

big companies or agencies<br />

that need and use spatial<br />

information. In summary,<br />

Geoinformatics engineers<br />

find employment in:<br />

• small and medium-sized<br />

companies working in the<br />

field of GIS development<br />

and management, of<br />

Computer Science applied<br />

to spatial data-base management,<br />

to logistics and<br />

land planning,<br />

• public and private, national<br />

and local companies working<br />

on territorial mapping,<br />

on cadaster, on spatial data<br />

infrastructure, on territorial<br />

data collection, on environmental<br />

data management<br />

and analysis,<br />

• big industry (e.g., for telecommunications)<br />

and big<br />

companies which needs<br />

experts for spatial information,<br />

• companies developing systems<br />

for the analysis and<br />

management of networks of<br />

environmental sensors,<br />

• companies developing<br />

hardware and software for<br />

environmental applications,<br />

• advanced research institutes<br />

or companies working<br />

on the Internet of Places,<br />

Big Geodata, Sensor<br />

Enablement, Urban Data<br />

City Analytics, Earth<br />

Observations.<br />

REFERENCES<br />

Webpages of international MSc in<br />

Geoinformatics<br />

Aalto, http://www.aalto.fi/en/studies/<br />

education/programme/geoinformatics_<br />

master/<br />

ETH, https://www.ethz.ch/en/studies/<br />

prospective-masters-degree-students/<br />

masters-degree-programmes/mastersdegree-programmes-architecture-and-civilengineering/master-geomatics.html<br />

KTH, https://www.kth.se/en/studies/master/<br />

transport-and-geoinformation-technology/<br />

description-1.198559<br />

TU Delft, http://www.tudelft.nl/en/study/<br />

master-of-science/master-programmes/<br />

geomatics/<br />

TU Twente, https://www.utwente.nl/<br />

en/education/master/programmes/<br />

geo-information-science-earthobservation/#masters-programme<br />

TUM,https://portal.mytum.de/<br />

studium/studiengaenge_en/geodaesie_<br />

und_geoinformation_master?ignore_<br />

redirection=yes<br />

Twente, https://www.utwente.nl/<br />

en/education/master/programmes/<br />

geographical-information-managementapplications/#masters-programme<br />

UCL, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospectivestudents/graduate/taught/degrees/spatiotemporal-analytics-big-data-mining-msc<br />

UCL, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/prospectivestudents/graduate/taught/degrees/<br />

geoinformatics-building-informationmodelling-msc<br />

UCL, http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/study/<br />

graduate-taught/msc-geospatial-analysis<br />

Webpage of Politecnico di Milano<br />

www.polimi.it<br />

Webpage of the MSc in Geoinformatics<br />

Engineering of Politecnico di Milano: www.<br />

geoinformatics.polimi.it<br />

Webpage with information for international<br />

students at Politecnico di Milano<br />

http://www.polinternational.polimi.it/howto-apply/<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

Geoinformatics; Digital Earth; Big<br />

Geodata;<br />

Master of Science<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

In the new digital scenario, new professional<br />

figures are needed to manage the spatial and<br />

environmental information: geoinformatics<br />

engineers are high level experts in technologies<br />

for measuring, georeferencing, managing,<br />

analyzing, visualizing and publishing spatial<br />

and time varying information, with a particular<br />

concern to environmental data. As the academic<br />

teaching is concerned, some universities<br />

in Europe propose courses in Geoinformatics.<br />

In Italy, Politecnico di Milano started in 2016<br />

the first national MSc in Geoinformatics Engineering:<br />

this paper describes it.<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Ludovico Biagi<br />

ludovico.biagi@polimi.it<br />

Politecnico di Milano, DICA,<br />

P.zza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, 20133<br />

Milano<br />

28 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

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<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 29


REPORT<br />

VGI and crisis mapping in an<br />

emergency situation<br />

Comparison of four case studies: Haiti, Kibera, Kathmandu, Centre Italy<br />

di Lucia Saganeiti, Federico Amato, Gabriele Nolè, Beniamino Murgante<br />

Fig.1 - Sequentially mapping<br />

OSMs to Port-Au-Prince:<br />

the first concerns the pre<br />

earthquake situation, the<br />

second situation as of January<br />

29, 2010 and the latest<br />

situation in December 2016.<br />

Source: http: www.openstreetmap.org;<br />

www.hotosm.org<br />

Over the last decade<br />

new voluntary<br />

mapping patterns are<br />

commonly known as<br />

VGI – Volunteered<br />

Geographic Information<br />

– that is, geo-localized<br />

information created<br />

voluntarily and<br />

consciously by web<br />

users. These are<br />

supported by platforms<br />

such as OpenStreetMap<br />

that have been shown<br />

in many emergency<br />

cases and not, a valid<br />

source of data, such<br />

detailed to be used for<br />

rescue operations.<br />

In recent crisis contexts,<br />

the use of geo-spatial data<br />

analysis has been a precious<br />

resource in coordinating of<br />

rescue operations (Boccardo<br />

& Pasquali, 2012). As a<br />

consequence, numerous Open<br />

Source platform born to<br />

answer to the growing demand<br />

for geo-information. Crisis<br />

Mapping (CM) consists of<br />

the spontaneous process of<br />

gathering and geo-locating<br />

data from different sources,<br />

including closed/open-data, or<br />

crowdsourcing databases. These<br />

data are verified, catalogued and<br />

finally made visible in ad hoc<br />

platforms (Poser & Dransch,<br />

2010).<br />

With the overwhelming of<br />

technology, the spread of<br />

smartphones and mobile<br />

or fixed connections,<br />

humanitarian aid management<br />

during the post-emergency<br />

phases has radically changed.<br />

Today, even in less developed<br />

countries, most people have<br />

a mobile phone and they are<br />

able to send at least a simple<br />

SMS. Therefore, the term<br />

Crisis Mapping is often used<br />

to identify mapping activities<br />

during humanitarian crises. The<br />

activity of CM is targeted at<br />

collecting, displaying, updating<br />

and analysing real-time data<br />

in emergencies due to natural<br />

disasters such as earthquakes,<br />

floods, tsunamis, hurricanes,<br />

or anthropic disaster such as<br />

landslides, terrorist attacks or<br />

serious industrial accidents.<br />

When a disastrous event occurs,<br />

local or remote people (Crisis<br />

Mappers via web) mobilize<br />

themselves to update maps,<br />

report emergencies and spread<br />

news. This participation also<br />

helps to increase awareness of<br />

the event. Crisis Mappers are<br />

generally (unpaid) voluntary<br />

with or without specific skills.<br />

Indeed, a group of mappers is<br />

generally composed by simple<br />

resident of the area affected<br />

by the disaster who want<br />

to contribute to the rescue<br />

activities, computer science<br />

experts, web programmer<br />

who want to provide their<br />

30 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

scientific contribution to<br />

the coordination operations.<br />

To this purposes, a number<br />

of online groups have been<br />

created. Among them, one<br />

of the most important is<br />

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap<br />

Team (HOT), which supported<br />

OpenStreetMap (OSM)<br />

mapper activity in the first<br />

use of the application for an<br />

humanitarian goal: he Haiti<br />

earthquake in 2010 (Soden &<br />

Palen, 2014). Another example<br />

of Crisis Mapping is Ushahaidi,<br />

a web platform that uses OSM<br />

maps and is updated through<br />

the geo localization of messages<br />

from SMS, tweets and emails<br />

that contain certain keywords,<br />

called alert.<br />

Other experiences adopted<br />

during the Hurricanes Sandy<br />

and Irene classified tweets on<br />

maps based on hashtags (http://<br />

faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/<br />

TtT_Hurricane_Map_byEvent.<br />

html).<br />

The availability of free satellite<br />

data and the experimentation<br />

of ever-new remote sensing<br />

techniques played a primary<br />

role in the spread of these<br />

approaches. CM activities<br />

can be considered as open<br />

participatory policies. Indeed,<br />

anyone join these communities,<br />

update their country map or a<br />

distant country one that they<br />

do not know, report discomfort<br />

launching a crisis map or report<br />

the quality values of a region<br />

through a map showing all the<br />

parks in the area, the paths<br />

without architectural barriers,<br />

or anything else.<br />

This article proposes an<br />

analysis of several case in<br />

which volunteering activities<br />

were carried out in some postemergency<br />

phases to contribute<br />

to the rescue operations and to<br />

build a previously non-existent<br />

cognitive framework.<br />

The analysed web platforms are<br />

OpenStreetMap e Ushahidi.<br />

Four case studies are considered:<br />

the Haiti earthquake of 2010,<br />

the post election crisis of Kibera<br />

in 2007/2008, the Kathmandu<br />

experience with the Nepal<br />

earthquake of 2012 and the<br />

central Italy earthquake of<br />

2016. These four cases show<br />

substantial differences:<br />

Haiti<br />

With the disastrous earthquake,<br />

affecting Haiti in 2010, begins<br />

the spread of OSM in a natural<br />

emergency situation. Here<br />

the OSM community has<br />

had to endure a hard work to<br />

gain credibility before being<br />

recognized as an association.<br />

This is the first striking case in<br />

which is the population with<br />

SMS, Tweet e App, direct the<br />

rescue. The rescuers, with the<br />

support of platforms such as<br />

OSM and Ushahidi, receive<br />

updates without any third party<br />

intermediation (Neis, Singler,<br />

& Zipf, 2014) (Fig.1).<br />

Chart 1a - utilization crowd mapping<br />

platforms Haiti<br />

Chart 1c - utilization crowd mapping<br />

platforms Kibera<br />

Kibera<br />

Ushahidi is born in a contest<br />

of electoral violence. In Kibera,<br />

following the presidential<br />

elections in 2007, there was a<br />

climate of civil violence and a<br />

part of the population felt the<br />

need to make the whole world<br />

aware of the situation that was<br />

affecting their country. This<br />

led to the birth of Ushaihdi,<br />

which in swahilli means<br />

“witness” (Goldstein & Rotich,<br />

2008). This case highlights<br />

how technology can be used<br />

not only as an evidence of the<br />

violence suffered but also to<br />

spread messages of hatred and<br />

violence.<br />

Kathmandu<br />

In Nepal, a country with a high<br />

seismic and tsunami risk, the<br />

OSM community started to<br />

take shape since 2012, helping<br />

to update the cartography<br />

of the country and to create<br />

information and interest toward<br />

the topic of disaster risk,<br />

Chart 1b - utilization crowd mapping<br />

platforms Kathmadu<br />

Chart 1d - utilization crowd mapping<br />

platforms Centro Italia<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 31


REPORT<br />

especially in schools (Soden,<br />

Budhathoki, & Palen, 2014).<br />

In 2015, when the earthquake<br />

occurred, the country was not<br />

taken unprepared by the fact<br />

that the OSM community<br />

had long been consolidated<br />

and could therefore act more<br />

easily (Poiani, dos Santos<br />

Rocha, Castro Degrossi, & de<br />

Albuquerque, 2016).<br />

Central Italy<br />

Following the earthquake<br />

swarm hitting the territory of<br />

Central Italy since 24 August<br />

2016, the OSM community<br />

has been working hard to<br />

update local maps and make<br />

them available to everyone.<br />

This promptness with which<br />

the community developed a<br />

huge quantity of useful geoinformation<br />

has aroused the<br />

interest of the Copernicus<br />

project, that has acquired OSM<br />

data and redistributed them<br />

to the rescuers, i.e. the italian<br />

civil protection. Therefore,<br />

there was not a direct passage<br />

between OSM and rescuers,<br />

as Copernicus mediation was<br />

needed.<br />

To correctly evaluate and<br />

compare these experiences,<br />

an evaluation of the temporal<br />

continuity of the projects would<br />

be necessary. Indeed, they<br />

sometimes produce the highest<br />

results right after the disasters<br />

to face an emergency, except<br />

Chart 2 - Comparison chart between the four<br />

case studies analyzed.<br />

Character of the<br />

event<br />

then die with the same speed<br />

when the emergency ends.<br />

The different cases were first<br />

evaluated individually, each<br />

from the OSM platform’s<br />

birth year (2004) up to the<br />

end of 2016 (Chart 1a-d).<br />

Subsequently, they were<br />

compared through a qualitative<br />

graph based on the period<br />

before the emergency event, the<br />

period of the emergency event<br />

and the next one.<br />

Therefore, analyzing the preemergency,<br />

emergency and<br />

post-emergency were given the<br />

following scores:<br />

Haiti (Chart 1a): as far as<br />

the pre-emergency period<br />

is concerned, a score of 0<br />

is assigned. This is because<br />

there was not an active<br />

technological community in<br />

the area before the seismic<br />

event. For the emergency<br />

period, the maximum score<br />

of 10 was assigned. In fact<br />

the OSM community is<br />

formed during the emergency<br />

period (seismic event) and the<br />

emergency responders directly<br />

use the datasets created by it.<br />

For post-emergence a score<br />

ranges from 9 to 5. Numerous<br />

initiatives and coordination<br />

Haiti Kathmandu Kibera Centro Italia<br />

Natural Natural Anthropic Natural<br />

Type of event Earthquake Earthquake, Tsunami<br />

Main open source<br />

platforms used<br />

Main closed source<br />

platforms used<br />

Web and social<br />

Developed projects<br />

and<br />

non-profit<br />

organizations<br />

Direct relationship<br />

between rescuers<br />

and the technology<br />

community<br />

OSM, HOT,<br />

Ushahidi, Sahana,<br />

Crisis Commons<br />

Google<br />

Mapmaker,<br />

DigitalGlobe<br />

GeoEye<br />

Facebook, Twitter<br />

HOT<br />

OSM, Ushahidi,<br />

HOT<br />

Post-elettoral<br />

violence<br />

Ushahidi, OSM<br />

Seismic swarm<br />

OSM, HOT<br />

Google Maps Google Maps Copernicus, DigitalGlobe<br />

Facebook, Twitter,<br />

Skype<br />

Open Cities<br />

Kathmandu,<br />

Kathmandu Living<br />

Labs (KLL), MapGive<br />

Facebook,<br />

Twitter<br />

Map Kibera,<br />

Voice of Kibera<br />

Facebook, Twitter, Flickr<br />

terremotocentroitalia.info<br />

YES YES YES NO<br />

Tab. 1 - A comparison table between the various case studies reveals the platforms used<br />

and the relationships between the data produced and the rescuers.<br />

operations with humanitarian<br />

organizations took place in the<br />

years after the event; today the<br />

OSM community continues to<br />

work on Haiti territory and is<br />

very active.<br />

Kibera (Chart 1b): as far as<br />

the pre-emergency period<br />

is concerned, a score of 0 is<br />

assigned. This is because there<br />

were not an active technological<br />

community in the area before<br />

the emergency event (electoral<br />

violence). For the emergency<br />

period a score ranges from 5<br />

to 7. The score is increasing<br />

in this period since during<br />

the emergency phase, several<br />

crowd mapping groups started<br />

to spread in the area; Ushahidi<br />

is born in this period and<br />

news are spread through crisis<br />

maps. For post-emergence<br />

a score ranges from 9 to 6,<br />

since immediately after the<br />

emergency, all site maps are<br />

updated to allow humanitarian<br />

organizations to be in direct<br />

contact with local events.<br />

Kathmandu (Chart 1c): as far<br />

as the pre-emergency period is<br />

concerned a score ranges from<br />

0 to 8. In a period of peace,<br />

in fact, Kathmandu (Nepal)<br />

becomes an active community.<br />

32 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

Tab. 2 – Assign score from 0 to 10 to<br />

four case studies with relative legend.<br />

The OSM community starts<br />

to update maps and spreading<br />

knowledge about seismic<br />

risk, especially in schools. For<br />

the emergency period, the<br />

maximum score of 10 was<br />

assigned. Thanks to the work<br />

done by the OSM community<br />

during the pre-emergence<br />

period, the emergency period<br />

becomes an opportunity to<br />

test the efficiency of crowd<br />

mapping. In fact, it is the<br />

time of maximum efficiency<br />

of the platforms thanks to a<br />

well-established community,<br />

ready to face the event. For<br />

post-emergence a score of 5<br />

is assigned. Today the OSM<br />

community continues to<br />

persist.<br />

Central Italy (Chart 1d):<br />

as far as the pre-emergency<br />

period is concerned a score<br />

ranges from 0 to 4 with a<br />

peak of 5 in 2009. The OSM<br />

community starts working<br />

already before the events. In<br />

2009, the score increases to 5<br />

as after the earthquake striking<br />

Abruzzo, the OSM community<br />

worked to update the maps<br />

of L’Aquila. Nevertheless,<br />

they only worked on the<br />

maps after the earthquake (to<br />

support the reconstruction).<br />

For the emergency period a<br />

score of 7 is assigned. In fact,<br />

during the emergency, the<br />

OSM community appears<br />

to be efficient in updating<br />

the maps. Despite that,<br />

the use of the data by the<br />

rescuers was only possible<br />

through the intermediation<br />

of other entities. For the post<br />

emergency period a score of<br />

6 or 5 is assigned. This score<br />

is indicative, it is only an<br />

estimate of what could happen<br />

considering that Central<br />

Italy is still in the state of<br />

emergency (January <strong>2017</strong>).<br />

The qualitative chart represents<br />

the four case studies<br />

compared. The yellow zone<br />

represents the period before<br />

the event, the red zone the<br />

event and the green zone the<br />

following period. It showed<br />

that: In cases where prior to<br />

the event (seismic or other)<br />

there was a already stable and<br />

already active crisis mapper<br />

community, the use of the<br />

platforms and datasets made<br />

available was immediate. It<br />

is also evident, under some<br />

circumstances, that these<br />

platforms are being used<br />

most in the emergency period<br />

by reaching high peaks,<br />

and are left out in pre and postemergence<br />

periods.<br />

REFERENCES<br />

1. Boccardo, P. & Pasquali, P. (2012), Web mapping services in<br />

a crowdsource environment for disaster management: state of<br />

the art and further development, International Archives of the<br />

Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information<br />

Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B4, 2012 XXII ISPRS Congress, 25<br />

August – 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 543-548<br />

2. Goldstein, J. & Rotich, J. (2008), Digitally Networked Technology<br />

in Kenya’s 2007–2008 Post-Election Crisis. Berkman Centre<br />

Research Publication No. 2008-09. The Berkman Centre for<br />

internet & society at Harvard University. http://cyber.harvard.<br />

edu/sites/cyber.harvard.edu/files/Goldstein&Rotich_Digitally_<br />

Networked_Technology_Kenyas_Crisis.pdf.pdf last access<br />

20/05/<strong>2017</strong><br />

3. Neis, P., Singler, P. & Zipf, A. (2010), Collaborative mapping and<br />

Emergency Routing for Disaster Logistics - Case studies from the Haiti<br />

earthquake and the UN portal for Afrika. In Proceedings of the<br />

Geospatial Crossroads@ GI_Forum, Salzburg, Austria, 6–9 July<br />

2010; Volume 10<br />

4. Poiani, T.H., Rocha, R.d.S., Degrossi, L.C. & de Albuquerque,<br />

J.P (2016) Potential of Collaborative Mapping for Disaster Relief:<br />

A Case Study of OpenStreetMap in the Nepal Earthquake 2015, In<br />

Proceedings of the 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference<br />

on System Sciences (HICSS), Washington, DC, USA, 5<br />

January 2016; pp. 188–197.Poser, K., & Dransch, D. (2010).<br />

Volunteered Geographic Information for Disaster Management<br />

with Application to Rapid Flood Damage Estimation. Geomatica,<br />

Vol.64. n.1.<br />

5. Soden, R. & Palen, L. (2014), From Crowdsourced Mapping to<br />

Community Mapping:The Post-Earthquark work of OpenStreetMap<br />

Haiti, Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the<br />

Design of Cooperative Systems COOP 2014, 27-30 May 2014,<br />

Nice (France) , Springer International Publishing Switzerland<br />

2014, pp 311-326, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-06498-7_19<br />

6. Soden, R., Budhathoki, N. & Palen, L. (2014), Resilience-Building<br />

and the Crisis Informatics Agenda: Lessons Learned from Open Cities<br />

Kathmandu, Proceedings of the 11th International ISCRAM<br />

Conference – University Park, Pennsylvania, USA, May 2014<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

Crowdsourcing; OSM; Ushahidi;<br />

Crisismapping; VGI<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

Over the last decade new voluntary mapping patterns are commonly<br />

known as VGI – Volunteered Geographic Information –<br />

that is, geo-localized information created voluntarily and consciously<br />

by web users. These are supported by platforms such as<br />

OpenStreetMap that have been shown in many emergency cases<br />

and not, a valid source of data, such detailed to be used for rescue<br />

operations. Another completely open source platform that has<br />

revolutionized the world of geographic information and how to<br />

make reports is Ushaidi that through interactive maps represents<br />

testimonies, reports, diaries, and citizen reports.<br />

Tab. 3 - utilization crowd mapping platforms since birth of OSM in 2004.<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Lucia Saganeiti, lucia.saganeiti@gmail.com<br />

Federico Amato, federico.amato@unibas.it<br />

Beniamino Murgante,<br />

beniamino.murgante@unibas.it<br />

School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, Viale<br />

dellAteneo Lucano 10, 85100 Potenza, Italy<br />

Gabriele Nolè, gabriele.nole@imaa.cnr.it<br />

Italian National Research <strong>GEOmedia</strong> Council, n°3-<strong>2017</strong> IMAA C.da Santa 33<br />

Loja, Tito Scalo, Potenza 85050, Italy


NEWS<br />

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installation is possible on any vehicle (aerial, terrestrial, marine).<br />

Here the list of the options we will release in the next months:<br />

RGB Camera<br />

a 5 Megapixel Global Shutter camera would be available to add the RGB<br />

value to the pointcloud.<br />

SmartSurvey SCANFLY - new features<br />

• The remote control through a dedicated pc software;<br />

• The real-time point-cloud streaming on the pc;<br />

• The RTK correction of the position/trajectory in real-time.<br />

Backpack<br />

this solution will allow the indoor use of SCANFLY. Our R&D team developed a hybrid solution to allow an INS<br />

mode (with Inertial System and GNSS) and a SLAM mode for automatic indoor localization and mapping. A further<br />

option is an high resolution 360° panoramic camera.<br />

Universal Mounting Plate<br />

we would increase our mounting plate portfolio so we studied a universal solution to let the customer switch from<br />

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34 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong><br />

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<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 35


NEWS<br />

36 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


NEWS<br />

I.MODI - Structural Monitoring<br />

through an advanced use of the<br />

satellite remote sensing<br />

I.MODI (Implemented MOnitoring system<br />

for structural DIsplacement) is a value added<br />

service, co-funded by European programme<br />

H2020, that integrates Earth Observation<br />

technologies, ground based data and ICT to<br />

develop services for monitoring the stability<br />

of buildings in large urban areas and for controlling<br />

critical civil infrastructures.<br />

Monitoring urban areas and critical infrastructure<br />

networks is a dominant socio-economical<br />

issue for the safety of the population.<br />

Structural deterioration with aging and effects<br />

of natural and man-made ground settlement<br />

processes pose a threat to structures and<br />

building strength.<br />

To guarantee a systematic and comprehensive<br />

control over large areas, satellite remote sensing<br />

can be effectively adopted. Differential<br />

Interferometry SAR (DInSAR) technology<br />

exploited by I.MODI represents an adequate<br />

alternative solution can be fully assimilated<br />

within the ground-based monitoring.<br />

Through multiple levels of services, I.MODI<br />

examines structural displacements and performs<br />

assessments on the level of damage and<br />

of its possible evolution. Reports are provided<br />

using WebGIS viewer or by user-friendly<br />

technical reports, allowing non-experts to utilize<br />

outcomes of a DInSAR analysis.<br />

The I.MODI monitoring system has a primary<br />

role in setting up mitigation and prevention<br />

actions based on the capability to<br />

perform back analysis using data archived<br />

since early 1990s and to be customizable for<br />

different monitoring end-user needs.<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 37


NEWS<br />

City Explorer 3D<br />

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26th to the 28th of September within the booth acquired by EuroMed Mapping, a<br />

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another Italian company operating in the sector of photogrammetry and remote sensing.<br />

EuroMed Mapping's booth will be located in Hall 4.1 with number B4033 where<br />

demos and some of the most innovative, recently developed tools and instruments<br />

concerning 3D modelling, virtual tours and environmental mapping will be shown<br />

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Aeronike looks forward welcoming you in the above-mentioned occasion to introduce<br />

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38 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


NEWS<br />

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<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 39


NEWS<br />

40 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


NEWS<br />

GIS for regional analysis.<br />

The Local Innovation Map<br />

The Local Innovation Map in the<br />

Sicani Area is the result of a didactic<br />

experimentation conducted in the field<br />

of GIS applied to Regional and Urban<br />

Planning, held by the writer in the context<br />

of the degree course in Regional,<br />

Urban and Environmental Planning at<br />

the Polytechnic University of Palermo.<br />

Inner areas are the focus of the<br />

National Strategy for Internal Areas<br />

(SNAI), which provides for significant<br />

investments both for the enhancement<br />

of services and infrastructures and for<br />

local development projects aimed at<br />

promoting entrepreneurial ideas in the<br />

sector of agriculture, sustainable tourism,<br />

handicraft, landscape and cultural<br />

values.<br />

The research arises from the belief that<br />

in inner areas, which can be defined as<br />

territorial suburbs but also as great reserves<br />

of local identity resources, there<br />

are marks of change that can produce<br />

new life cycles in rural and urban areas<br />

through investment in environmental<br />

and cultural heritage and local food.<br />

In spite of the critical features of a marginal<br />

area, some isolated experiences<br />

can be identified in the Sicani Area as<br />

evidence of the presence of creative talent<br />

in this "depopulated" inner territory.<br />

Some examples are: a innovative<br />

ICT start-up, a co-working space, some<br />

cultural associations, companies in the<br />

industry of renewable energies, manufacturing<br />

specialization and innovative<br />

food and wine production.<br />

By means of QGIS, the research work<br />

has been conducted in order to detect<br />

territorial distribution of innovative<br />

activities in the Sicani Area and recognize<br />

the connections or the absence of<br />

relationships between concentration/<br />

fragmentation/lack of innovation activities<br />

with demographic dynamics,<br />

infrastructure, cultural resources and<br />

local productivity.<br />

The Local Innovation Map, implemented<br />

on the basis of updating the<br />

innovative activities progressively settled<br />

in this area, could be a useful tool<br />

for local administrations to understand<br />

progressive localization reasons and to<br />

direct future development policy aimed<br />

at the promotion of cultural/productive<br />

activities in the inner areas.<br />

By Marilena Orlando<br />

Phd Regional and Urban Planning,<br />

Professor in Charge of “GIS applied to<br />

Urban and Regional Planning” at the<br />

Polytechnic - University of Palermo.<br />

Via Indipendenza, 106<br />

46028 Sermide - Mantova - Italy<br />

Phone +39.0386.62628<br />

info@geogra.it<br />

www.geogra.it<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 41


REPORT<br />

Rheticus: Dynamic and continuous<br />

geoinformation service for critical<br />

infrastructure and enviromental monitoring<br />

by Giuseppe Forenza<br />

Fig. 1 - Screenshot of the Rheticus platform.<br />

The article describes some activities<br />

of the Rheticus geoinformation<br />

service for both critical<br />

infrastructure and environmental<br />

monitoring. Two particular<br />

applications of the cloud based<br />

platform are shown below.<br />

Land and infrastructure<br />

monitoring is a key activity<br />

to ensure people’s safety,<br />

environmental protection<br />

and the safeguarding of assets at<br />

all stages of the life cycle of infrastructure<br />

design, production<br />

and management.<br />

Traditional campaigns for the<br />

regular monitoring of large and<br />

remote areas, however, employ<br />

considerable financial resources<br />

and time and are often complex<br />

to implement. The use of<br />

satellite technology allows overcoming<br />

these limitations and<br />

obtaining frequent,<br />

accurate and accessible<br />

information<br />

thanks to the wide<br />

availability of spatial<br />

information, even in<br />

open data mode.<br />

Among the different satellite<br />

technologies available, GPS<br />

and satellite images are widely<br />

used. In this context, Europe<br />

has decided to launch two constellations<br />

of satellites: Galileo<br />

and Sentinel. Galileo, currently<br />

under construction, which will<br />

have 30 GNSS satellites (Global<br />

Navigation Satellite System,<br />

the European GPS). The Sentinel<br />

satellites, of which four are<br />

already operational, are dedicated<br />

to Earth observation in the<br />

context of the Copernicus program<br />

and the data they collect<br />

are made available as open data.<br />

Rheticus platform<br />

and Displacement<br />

Images captured by the Sentinel<br />

satellites are at the basis of the<br />

monitoring services provided<br />

by the cloud platform Rheticus<br />

(www.rheticus.eu). Main<br />

application of these services are<br />

dedicated to the monitoring of:<br />

the stability of infrastructures<br />

(dams, roads, pipelines, etc.);<br />

slope stability and subsidence;<br />

the quality of coastal marine<br />

waters; forest fires; anthropic<br />

changes of the territory.<br />

The Rheticus cloud-based platform<br />

provides continuous monitoring<br />

services of the Earth’s<br />

surface. Shifting from data provision<br />

to geospatial knowledge<br />

and geo-analytics, its services<br />

are delivered by subscription<br />

and worldwide.<br />

Rheticus Displacement is one<br />

of the services provided through<br />

the www.rheticus.eu cloud<br />

platform.<br />

The Rheticus Displacement<br />

geoinformation service offers<br />

monthly monitoring of<br />

millimetric displacements of<br />

the ground surface, landslide<br />

areas, the stability of infrastructures,<br />

and subsidence due<br />

to groundwater withdrawal/<br />

entry or from the excavation of<br />

mines and tunnels. The service<br />

also provides information on<br />

anthropic changes and infrastructural<br />

dynamics over the<br />

area where the infrastructure is<br />

established.<br />

Rheticus Displacement provides<br />

a yearly historical analysis with<br />

monthly updates.<br />

The mapping activity is made<br />

through the monitoring of<br />

points on the ground with<br />

high stability called Persistent<br />

Scatterers (PS). The PS is produced<br />

through the processing<br />

of the European Copernicus<br />

42 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

Sentinel-1 satellite images or<br />

COSMO-SkyMed satellite data.<br />

Already used by main European<br />

infrastructures and transportation<br />

engineering companies, the<br />

service is targeted to: Infrastructures<br />

and works managers and<br />

builders; Public Administration;<br />

Planners & professionals in the<br />

territory.<br />

This service was adopted by<br />

numerous customers in various<br />

application areas after only its<br />

first months of operation.<br />

Two success stories:<br />

• ANAS S.p.A. (National<br />

Autonomous Roads Corporation):<br />

analysis of slope<br />

stability to support the planning,<br />

design and monitoring<br />

of roads.<br />

• MM S.p.A. (former Metropolitana<br />

Milanese): analysis<br />

of the instability of roads<br />

overlying pipelines for the<br />

detection of leaks in the<br />

water and sewage supply network.<br />

Monitoring displacements of<br />

the sewer network in Milan<br />

(Italy)<br />

The public sewerage network<br />

of Milan runs for approximately<br />

1500 km. MM SpA (former<br />

Metropolitana Milanese<br />

SpA), the managing company<br />

of Integrated Water and<br />

Wastewater Services of the City<br />

of Milan, had been searching<br />

for a method to quickly detect<br />

ground surface movements caused<br />

by the structural defect of<br />

its collector that could affect the<br />

area above the primary network<br />

and adjacent areas.<br />

Satellite radar interferometry<br />

was considered the most accurate<br />

and affordable survey method<br />

to prevent and identify possible<br />

failures of the sewage system,<br />

even in relation to the high<br />

traffic volume of metropolitan<br />

cities like Milan.<br />

Thanks to the Rheticus platform<br />

(www.rheticus.eu) and its<br />

geoinformation service Rheticus<br />

Displacement, which processes<br />

the interferometric data of<br />

Sentinel satellites, 50 points<br />

with sensitive sub-vertical movements<br />

on 24 roads with heavy<br />

traffic were identified and will<br />

be investigated in a detailed<br />

field survey.<br />

Rheticus Network Alert -<br />

A new user experience for water<br />

& sewer networks<br />

Powered by Hexagon Geospatial’s<br />

Smart M.App technology,<br />

Rheticus Network Alert has<br />

been lauched at HxGN Live<br />

Conference – June <strong>2017</strong>- Las<br />

Vegas.<br />

The objective of Rheticus Network<br />

Alert is to assist integrated<br />

water and sewer networks<br />

managing companies in their<br />

maintenance and inspection<br />

activities.<br />

Rheticus Network Alert simplifies<br />

the analysis of the Persistent<br />

Scatterers processed by Rheticus<br />

Displacement, providing information,<br />

filtered and applied<br />

directly to the network. Maintenance<br />

activity and inspection<br />

Fig. 2 – Displacements over the sewer Network in Milan, Italy.<br />

priority, are simplified and the<br />

Network Alert Smart M.App<br />

provides the level of warning on<br />

each pipelines.<br />

A growing network<br />

of Authorized Resellers.<br />

The distribution of Rheticus<br />

services is global. To guarantee<br />

assistance to organizations, professionals<br />

and decision makers<br />

in any part of the globe, Planetek<br />

Italia is building a network<br />

of valued Authorized Distributors.<br />

Several companies in<br />

Europe, Central America, Africa<br />

and Asia have already joined its<br />

innovative business model and<br />

started offering Rheticus services<br />

to their markets. To be part<br />

of this network write at info@<br />

planetek.it<br />

Rheticus awards<br />

Developed by Planetek Italia,<br />

Rheticus has been already awarded<br />

in several competitions and<br />

prizes at Italian and international<br />

level, for the idea of shifting<br />

from the provision of data to<br />

the provision of services, intended<br />

as continuous access to<br />

information from the users.<br />

A few months after its official<br />

launch in April 2016, Rheticus<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 43


REPORT<br />

was awarded:<br />

4As “Application of the Year<br />

2016” by OpenGeoData<br />

Association<br />

4the “TIM Telecom Best<br />

Practices for Innovation<br />

2016” during the Premio<br />

Best Practices for Innovation<br />

ceremony organized by<br />

Confindustria Salerno, Italy.<br />

4It was also listed among finalists<br />

of the European EO<br />

product of the Year 2016<br />

by the EARSC Association,<br />

and finalist of Hexagon<br />

Geospatial’s 2016 IGNITE<br />

Competition.<br />

Rheticus was recently presented at<br />

ENGAGE <strong>2017</strong>, the DigitalGlobe’s<br />

forum, in London, UK, and<br />

at HxGN Live Conference <strong>2017</strong>,<br />

Las Vegas, Nevada.<br />

Rheticus information and DEMO<br />

on http://www.rheticus.eu<br />

Fig. 3 - Dynamic geoinformation about displacements over the sewer Network in Milan, Italy.<br />

KEYWORDS<br />

geoinformation service; critical infrastructure;<br />

environment monitoring; rheticus network alert<br />

ABSTRACT<br />

Using free & open images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel satellites, the Rheticus cloudbased<br />

platform delivers industry-focused geoinformation services, in form of dynamic maps,<br />

reports, geo-analytics and alerts for professionals, private companies and Public Authorities,<br />

involved in engineering, utilities, energy, mining, land planning, environment and land monitoring.<br />

Subscribed users can receive contiuous information and analytics on the stability of infrastructures<br />

(dams, roads, railways, pipelines, etc.), slope stability and subsidence, the quality of<br />

coastal marine waters, forest fires and anthropic changes of the territory.<br />

AUTHOR<br />

Giuseppe Forenza<br />

forenza@planetek.it<br />

Planetek Italia<br />

44 <strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong>


REPORT<br />

<strong>GEOmedia</strong> n°3-<strong>2017</strong> 45


AGENDA<br />

4 - 7 September <strong>2017</strong><br />

UAV-g <strong>2017</strong> International<br />

Conference on Unmanned<br />

Aerial Vehicles in Geomatics<br />

Bonn (Germany)<br />

www.geoforall.it/k9cwq<br />

5 - 8 September <strong>2017</strong><br />

RSPSoc<strong>2017</strong> - Annual<br />

Conference Earth and Planets:<br />

Making the most of our<br />

observations<br />

Londron (United Kingdom)<br />

www.geoforall.it/kw3ua<br />

6 - 8 September <strong>2017</strong><br />

Strasbuorg (France)<br />

INSPIRE <strong>2017</strong> Conference<br />

www.geoforall.it/kwaky<br />

11 - 15 September <strong>2017</strong><br />

56th Photogrammetric Week<br />

<strong>2017</strong><br />

Stuttgart (Germany)<br />

www.geoforall.it/k9cwr<br />

26 - 28 September <strong>2017</strong><br />

INTERGEO <strong>2017</strong><br />

Berlin (Germany)<br />

http://www.intergeo.de/<br />

27 - 29 September<br />

Digital,Design and<br />

Development Fair <strong>2017</strong><br />

Hamburg (Germany)<br />

www.geoforall.it/kwawr<br />

9-10 October <strong>2017</strong><br />

EuroSDR / ISPRS Workshop<br />

on "Oblique Aerial Cameras -<br />

Sensors and Data Processing"<br />

Barcelona (Spain)<br />

www.geoforall.it/kwafq<br />

17 - 19 October <strong>2017</strong><br />

TECHNOLOGY for ALL<br />

<strong>2017</strong><br />

Rome (Italy)<br />

www.technologyforall.it<br />

23 - 25 November <strong>2017</strong><br />

12th International<br />

Conference on Non-<br />

Destructive Investigations<br />

and Microanalysis for the<br />

Diagnostics and Conservation<br />

of Cultural and Environmental<br />

Heritage (AIPnD)<br />

Turin (Italy)<br />

www.aipnd.it<br />

16-19 January 2018<br />

Geospatial World Forum<br />

Hyderabad (India)<br />

www.geoforall.it/kwacw<br />

6 – 11 May 2018<br />

FIG Congress<br />

Istanbul (Turkey)<br />

www.geoforall.it/k9cwx<br />

Teorema has been working<br />

alongside professionists proving<br />

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Via A. Romilli, 20/8 20139 Milano Italy • Tel. +39 02 5398739 • teorema@geomatica.it


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