scholarly journals A Monitoring System of Sand Mining in Large Rivers and Its Application to the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River, Myanmar

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 2331
Author(s):  
Charles R. Gruel ◽  
Edgardo M. Latrubesse

Sand mining is one of the major sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Rates of extraction are surpassing sand supply, and ensuing sand starvation is adversely impacting channel-floodplains and deltas. Therefore, quantifying sand mining’s location and extent, through global monitoring and detection, particularly in fluvial systems, is becoming a priority. Sand mining by dredges and barges (extraction of sand and secondarily gravel) in South East Asian rivers, including illegal sand mining, has become rampant, and a monitoring system is not yet in place. Here, we present a high-resolution remote sensing-based mining monitoring system for sand mining in fluvial systems. We used Sentinel-1 mission, a radar component of the Copernicus joint initiative of the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA). The system, tested in the Ayeyarwady, the second largest river in SE Asia, detects sand mining by barges almost in real-time with a satisfactory accuracy level. An additional advantage of the monitoring system is that it does not incur any costs, making it accessible to multiple users, decision-makers, and stakeholders.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan López-Vinielles ◽  
Pablo Ezquerro ◽  
Gerardo Herrera-García ◽  
Marta Béjar-Pizarro ◽  
Valerio Comerci ◽  
...  

<p>To improve safety in large cities, products and services exploiting Earth Observation (EO) technologies can be used to map vulnerable urban areas potentially affected by geohazards, with the aim of reducing human and economic losses caused by natural disasters. This work aims to increase the use of multi-mission EO derived products and services to assess urban vulnerability and geohazards, raising early awareness and training key users and decision makers on the use of EO derived products and services.</p><p>Currently, the InSAR processing tools from Geohazards Exploitation Platform (GEP) funded by European Space Agency, provide massive and dense surface displacement information, and availability of such data is expected to be expanded soon with the upcoming European Ground Motion Service being developed by the European Environment Agency. As the main end users are not trained to understand and analyze this type of data, the EU founded e-Shape project, in collaboration with the national Geological Surveys, is introducing a methodology for the use of InSAR products and supporting them to co-design specific products useful for the dissemination of information to the users active in key societal sectors  (local and regional administrations, and civil protection authorities). To this end, four products with different requirements have been developed, including the InSAR map, the InSAR validation report, the active geohazards report and the vulnerable urban areas report. These four products describe the displacements of the area, their accuracy, their relationship to triggers and the potential problems they could create, providing information for both technical staff and non-technical managers and decision-makers.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Ott ◽  
Esther Drolshagen ◽  
Detlef Koschny ◽  
Gerhard Drolshagen ◽  
Christoph Pilger ◽  
...  

<p>Fireballs are very bright meteors with magnitudes of at least -4. They can spark a lot of public interest. Especially, if they can be seen during daytime over populous areas. Social Media allows us to be informed about almost everything, worldwide, and in all areas of life in real-time. In the age of intensive use of these media, information is freely available seconds after the sighting of a fireball.</p><p>This is the basis of the alert system which is part of NEMO, the NEar real-time MOnitoring system, for bright fireballs. It uses Social Media, mainly Twitter, to be informed about a fireball event in near real-time. In addition, the system accesses various data sources to collect further information about the detected fireballs. The sources range from meteor networks, the data from weather satellites or lightning detectors to the infrasound data of the IMS (International Monitoring System) operated by the CTBTO (Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation).</p><p>Since large meteoroids or asteroids can be detected by these infrasound sensors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere, this network provides the possibility to detect fireballs worldwide and during day and night. From the infrasound data the energy of the object that caused the fireball can be determined and hence, its size and mass can be calculated. By combining all available information about the fireball from different data sources the amount of scientific knowledge about the event can be maximized.</p><p>NEMO was under development for about 2.5 years. Since the beginning of the year the system is in operation at the European Space Agency, as part of its Space Safety Programme. In this presentation we will give an overview about NEMO, its working principle and its relation to the IMS.</p>


Author(s):  
Andrey Aleksandrovich Yanik

This papers analyses problems related to monitoring and evaluating social and economic impacts arising from the development of space economy, especially space technologies. Using the best practices of the European Space Agency, various approaches to creating evaluation systems are considered. Special attention is paid to the Copernicus Program, mainly to the ways of identifying, measuring, and assessing the benefits for the economy and society resulting from its implementation. This research systematizes the main types of benefits that can be monitored. The author shows that interdisciplinary approaches are essential for solving theoretical and practical problems related to obtaining reliable data for decision makers in space technologies investments. Moreover, the formation of analytical skills in identifying social impacts is necessary for experts who realize the assessment procedures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 237 ◽  
pp. 01014
Author(s):  
Zhengyang Yuan ◽  
Jiayong Zhou ◽  
Cuncun Qian ◽  
Shizhong Wang ◽  
Juntao Zhao ◽  
...  

This paper describes the technical characteristics and application status of ANITAII (Analysing Interferometer for Ambient Air), an atmospheric monitoring system currently used by ESA (European Space Agency), reveals the characteristics and advantages of FTIR (Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy) technology in multi-component gas monitoring, and analyzes the application prospect of FTIR technology in the field of environmental monitoring.


Urban Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Janette Hartz-Karp ◽  
Dora Marinova

This article expands the evidence about integrative thinking by analyzing two case studies that applied the collaborative decision-making method of deliberative democracy which encourages representative, deliberative and influential public participation. The four-year case studies took place in Western Australia, (1) in the capital city Perth and surrounds, and (2) in the city-region of Greater Geraldton. Both aimed at resolving complex and wicked urban sustainability challenges as they arose. The analysis suggests that a new way of thinking, namely integrative thinking, emerged during the deliberations to produce operative outcomes for decision-makers. Building on theory and research demonstrating that deliberative designs lead to improved reasoning about complex issues, the two case studies show that through discourse based on deliberative norms, participants developed different mindsets, remaining open-minded, intuitive and representative of ordinary people’s basic common sense. This spontaneous appearance of integrative thinking enabled sound decision-making about complex and wicked sustainability-related urban issues. In both case studies, the participants exhibited all characteristics of integrative thinking to produce outcomes for decision-makers: salience—grasping the problems’ multiple aspects; causality—identifying multiple sources of impacts; sequencing—keeping the whole in view while focusing on specific aspects; and resolution—discovering novel ways that avoided bad choice trade-offs.


Author(s):  
Claudio Miccoli ◽  
Alessandro Turchi ◽  
Pierre Schrooyen ◽  
Domenic D’Ambrosio ◽  
Thierry Magin

AbstractThis work deals with the analysis of the cork P50, an ablative thermal protection material (TPM) used for the heat shield of the qarman Re-entry CubeSat. Developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) at the von Karman Institute (VKI) for Fluid Dynamics, qarman is a scientific demonstrator for Aerothermodynamic Research. The ability to model and predict the atypical behavior of the new cork-based materials is considered a critical research topic. Therefore, this work is motivated by the need to develop a numerical model able to respond to this demand, in preparation to the post-flight analysis of qarman. This study is focused on the main thermal response phenomena of the cork P50: pyrolysis and swelling. Pyrolysis was analyzed by means of the multi-physics Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code argo, developed at Cenaero. Based on a unified flow-material solver, the Volume Averaged Navier–Stokes (VANS) equations were numerically solved to describe the interaction between a multi-species high enthalpy flow and a reactive porous medium, by means of a high-order Discontinuous Galerkin Method (DGM). Specifically, an accurate method to compute the pyrolysis production rate was implemented. The modeling of swelling was the most ambitious task, requiring the development of a physical model accounting for this phenomenon, for the purpose of a future implementation within argo. A 1D model was proposed, mainly based on an a priori assumption on the swelling velocity and the resolution of a nonlinear advection equation, by means of a Finite Difference Method (FDM). Once developed, the model was successfully tested through a matlab code, showing that the approach is promising and thus opening the way to further developments.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
A. F. Purkhauser ◽  
J. A. Koch ◽  
R. Pail

Abstract The GRACE mission has demonstrated a tremendous potential for observing mass changes in the Earth system from space for climate research and the observation of climate change. Future mission should on the one hand extend the already existing time series and also provide higher spatial and temporal resolution that is required to fulfil all needs placed on a future mission. To analyse the applicability of such a Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) concept regarding hydrological applications, two GRACE-FO-type pairs in Bender formation are analysed. The numerical closed loop simulations with a realistic noise assumption are based on the short arc approach and make use of the Wiese approach, enabling a self-de-aliasing of high-frequency atmospheric and oceanic signals, and a NRT approach for a short latency. Numerical simulations for future gravity mission concepts are based on geophysical models, representing the time-variable gravity field. First tests regarding the usability of the hydrology component contained in the Earth System Model (ESM) by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the analysis regarding a possible flood monitoring and detection showed a clear signal in a third of the analysed flood cases. Our analysis of selected cases found that detection of floods was clearly possible with the reconstructed AOHIS/HIS signal in 20% of the tested examples, while in 40% of the cases a peak was visible but not clearly recognisable.


1993 ◽  
Vol 137 ◽  
pp. 812-819
Author(s):  
T. Appourchaux ◽  
D. Gough ◽  
P. Hyoyng ◽  
C. Catala ◽  
S. Frandsen ◽  
...  

PRISMA (Probing Rotation and Interior of Stars: Microvariability and Activity) is a new space mission of the European Space Agency. PRISMA is currently in a Phase A study with 3 other competitors. PRISMA is the only ESA-only mission amongst those four and only one mission will be selected in Spring 1993 to become a real space mission.The goal of the Phase A study is to determine whether the payload of PRISMA can be accommodated on a second unit of the X-ray Multi-Mirror (XMM) bus; and whether the budget of the PRISMA mission can be kept below 265 MAU (’88 Economic conditions). The XMM mission is an approved cornerstone and is in a Phase A together with PRISMA.


2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Mangano ◽  
Melinda Dósa ◽  
Markus Fränz ◽  
Anna Milillo ◽  
Joana S. Oliveira ◽  
...  

AbstractThe dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sunshield. BepiColombo cruise trajectory is a long journey into the inner heliosphere, and it includes one flyby of the Earth (in April 2020), two of Venus (in October 2020 and August 2021), and six of Mercury (starting from 2021), before orbit insertion in December 2025. A big part of the mission instruments will be fully operational during the mission cruise phase, allowing unprecedented investigation of the different environments that will encounter during the 7-years long cruise. The present paper reviews all the planetary flybys and some interesting cruise configurations. Additional scientific research that will emerge in the coming years is also discussed, including the instruments that can contribute.


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