scholarly journals Brief communication: Radar images for monitoring informal urban settlements in vulnerable zones in Lima, Peru

2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-70
Author(s):  
Luis Moya ◽  
Fernando Garcia ◽  
Carlos Gonzales ◽  
Miguel Diaz ◽  
Carlos Zavala ◽  
...  

Abstract. Lima, Peru's capital, has about 9.6 million inhabitants and keeps attracting more residents searching for a better life. Many citizens, without access to housing subsidies, live in informal housing and shack settlements. A typical social phenomenon in Lima is the sudden illegal occupation of areas for urban settlements. When such areas are unsafe against natural hazards, it is important to relocate such a population to avoid significant future losses. In this communication, we present an application of Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images to map the extension of a recent occupation of an area with unfavorable soil conditions against earthquakes.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Moya ◽  
Fernando Garcia ◽  
Carlos Gonzales ◽  
Miguel Diaz ◽  
Carlos Zavala ◽  
...  

Abstract. Lima city, Peru's capital, has about 9.6 million inhabitants and keeps attracting more residents searching for a better life. Many citizens, without access to housing subsidies, live in informal housing and shack settlements. A typical social phenomenon in Lima is the sudden illegal occupation of areas for urban settlements. When such areas are unsafe against natural hazards, it is important to relocate such a population to avoid significant future losses. In this communication, we present an application of Sentinel-1 SAR images to map the extension of a recent occupation of an area with unfavorable soil conditions against earthquakes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Sommer

Radar images of the open sea taken by airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) show typically several smeared ships. Due to their non-linear motions on a rough sea, these ships are smeared beyond recognition, such that their images are useless for classification or identification tasks. The ship imaging algorithm presented in this thesis consists of a fast image reconstruction using the fast factorized backprojection algorithm and an extended autofocus algorithm of large moving ships. This thesis analysis the factorization parameters of the fast factorized backprojection algorithm and describes how to choose them nearoptimally in order to reconstruct SAR images with minimal computational costs and without any loss of quality. Furthermore, this thesis shows how to estimate and compensate for the translation, the rotation and the deformation of a large arbitrarily moving ship in order to reconstruct a sharp image of the ship. The proposed autofocus technique generates images in which the ...


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 5091
Author(s):  
Jinxiao Wang ◽  
Fang Chen ◽  
Meimei Zhang ◽  
Bo Yu

Glacial lake extraction is essential for studying the response of glacial lakes to climate change and assessing the risks of glacial lake outburst floods. Most methods for glacial lake extraction are based on either optical images or synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. Although deep learning methods can extract features of optical and SAR images well, efficiently fusing two modality features for glacial lake extraction with high accuracy is challenging. In this study, to make full use of the spectral characteristics of optical images and the geometric characteristics of SAR images, we propose an atrous convolution fusion network (ACFNet) to extract glacial lakes based on Landsat 8 optical images and Sentinel-1 SAR images. ACFNet adequately fuses high-level features of optical and SAR data in different receptive fields using atrous convolution. Compared with four fusion models in which data fusion occurs at the input, encoder, decoder, and output stages, two classical semantic segmentation models (SegNet and DeepLabV3+), and a recently proposed model based on U-Net, our model achieves the best results with an intersection-over-union of 0.8278. The experiments show that fully extracting the characteristics of optical and SAR data and appropriately fusing them are vital steps in a network’s performance of glacial lake extraction.


2010 ◽  
Vol 138 (2) ◽  
pp. 475-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Alpers ◽  
Jen-Ping Chen ◽  
Chia-Jung Pi ◽  
I-I. Lin

Abstract Frontal lines having offshore distances typically between 40 and 80 km are often visible on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired over the east coast of Taiwan by the European Remote Sensing Satellites 1 and 2 (ERS-1 and ERS-2) and Envisat. In a previous paper the authors showed that they are of atmospheric and not of oceanic origin; however, in that paper they did not give a definite answer to the question of which physical mechanism causes them. In this paper the authors present simulations carried out with the fifth-generation Pennsylvania State University–National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model, which shows that the frontal lines are associated with a quasi-stationary low-level convergence zone generated by the dynamic interaction of onshore airflow of the synoptic-scale wind with the coastal mountain range of the island of Taiwan. Reversed airflow collides with the onshore-flowing air leading to an uplift of air, which is often accompanied by the formation of bands of increased cloud density and of rainbands. The physical mechanism causing the generation of the frontal lines is similar to the one responsible for the formation of cloud bands off the Island of Hawaii as described by Smolarkiewicz et al. Four SAR images are shown, one acquired by ERS-2 and three by Envisat, showing frontal lines at the east coast of Taiwan caused by this generation mechanism. For these events the recirculation pattern, as well as the frontal (or convective) lines observed, were reproduced quite well with the meteorological model. So, it is argued that the observed frontal lines are not seaward boundaries of (classical) barrier jets or of katabatic wind fields, which have characteristics that are quite different from the flow patterns around the east coast of Taiwan as indicated by the SAR images.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4637
Author(s):  
Runzhi Jiao ◽  
Qingsong Wang ◽  
Tao Lai ◽  
Haifeng Huang

The dramatic undulations of a mountainous terrain will introduce large geometric distortions in each Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) image with different look angles, resulting in a poor registration performance. To this end, this paper proposes a multi-hypothesis topological isomorphism matching method for SAR images with large geometric distortions. The method includes the Ridge-Line Keypoint Detection (RLKD) and Multi-Hypothesis Topological Isomorphism Matching (MHTIM). Firstly, based on the analysis of the ridge structure, a ridge keypoint detection module and a keypoint similarity description method are designed, which aim to quickly produce a small number of stable matching keypoint pairs under large look angle differences and large terrain undulations. The keypoint pairs are further fed into the MHTIM module. Subsequently, the MHTIM method is proposed, which uses the stability and isomorphism of the topological structure of the keypoint set under different perspectives to generate a variety of matching hypotheses, and iteratively achieves the keypoint matching. This method uses both local and global geometric relationships between two keypoints, hence it achieving better performance compared with traditional methods. We tested our approach on both simulated and real mountain SAR images with different look angles and different elevation ranges. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and stable matching performance of our approach.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Pollen Chakma ◽  
Aysha Akter

Floods are triggered by water overflow into drylands from several sources, including rivers, lakes, oceans, or heavy rainfall. Near real-time (NRT) flood mapping plays an important role in taking strategic measures to reduce flood damage after a flood event. There are many satellite imagery based remote sensing techniques that are widely used to generate flood maps. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images have proven to be more effective in flood mapping due to its high spatial resolution and cloud penetration capacity. This case study is focused on the super cyclone, commonly known as Amphan, stemming from the west Bengal-Bangladesh coast across the Sundarbans on 20 May 2020, with a wind speed between 155 -165  gusting up to 185 . The flooding extent is determined by analyzing the pre and post-event synthetic aperture radar images, using the change detection and thresholding (CDAT) method. The results showed an inundated landmass of 2146 on 22 May 2020, excluding Sundarban. However, the area became 1425 about a week after the event, precisely on 28 May 2020 . This persistency generated a more severe and intense flood, due to the broken embankments. Furthermore, 13 out of 19 coastal districts were affected by the flooding, while 8 were highly inundated, including Bagerhat, Pirojpur, Satkhira, Khulna, Barisal, Jhalokati, Patuakhali and Barguna. These findings were subsequently compared with an inundation map created with a validation survey immediately after the event and also with the disposed location using a machine learning-based image classification technique. Consequently, the comparison showed a close similarity between the inundation scenario and the flood reports from the secondary sources. This circumstance envisages the significant role of CDAT application in providing relevant information for an effective decision support system.


Author(s):  
K. Tummala ◽  
A. K. Jha ◽  
S. Kumar

Synthetic aperture radar technology has revolutionized earth observation with very high resolutions of below 5m, making it possible to distinguish individual urban features like buildings and even cars on the surface of the earth. But, the difficulty in interpretation of these images has hindered their use. The geometry of target objects and their orientation with respect to the SAR sensor contribute enormously to unexpected signatures on SAR images. Geometry of objects can cause single, double or multiple reflections which, in turn, affect the brightness value on the SAR images. Occlusions, shadow and layover effects are present in the SAR images as a result of orientation of target objects with respect to the incident microwaves. Simulation of SAR images is the best and easiest way to study and understand the anomalies. This paper discusses synthetic aperture radar image simulation, with the study of effect of target geometry as the main aim. Simulation algorithm has been developed in the time domain to provide greater modularity and to increase the ease of implementation. This algorithm takes into account the sensor and target characteristics, their locations with respect to the earth, 3-dimensional model of the target, sensor velocity, and SAR parameters. two methods have been discussed to obtain position and velocity vectors of SAR sensor – the first, from the metadata of real SAR image used to verify the simulation algorithm, and the second, from satellite orbital parameters. Using these inputs, the SAR image coordinates and backscatter coefficients for each point on the target are calculated. The backscatter coefficients at target points are calculated based on the local incidence angles using Muhleman's backscatter model. The present algorithm has been successfully implemented on radarsat-2 image of San Francisco bay area. Digital elevation models (DEMs) of the area under consideration are used as the 3d models of the target area. DEMs of different resolutions have been used to simulate SAR images in order to study how the target models affect the accuracy of simulation algorithm. The simulated images have been compared with radarsat-2 images to observe the efficiency of the simulation algorithm in accurately representing the locations and extents of different objects in the target area. The simulated algorithm implemented in this paper has given satisfactory results as the simulated images accurately show the different features present in the DEM of the target area.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (21) ◽  
pp. 4383
Author(s):  
Gang Zhang ◽  
Zhi Li ◽  
Xuewei Li ◽  
Sitong Liu

Self-supervised method has proven to be a suitable approach for despeckling on synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. However, most self-supervised despeckling methods are trained by noisy-noisy image pairs, which are constructed by using natural images with simulated speckle noise, time-series real-world SAR images or generative adversarial network, limiting the practicability of these methods in real-world SAR images. Therefore, in this paper, a novel self-supervised despeckling algorithm with an enhanced U-Net is proposed for real-world SAR images. Firstly, unlike previous self-supervised despeckling works, the noisy-noisy image pairs are generated from real-word SAR images through a novel generation training pairs module, which makes it possible to train deep convolutional neural networks using real-world SAR images. Secondly, an enhanced U-Net is designed to improve the feature extraction and fusion capabilities of the network. Thirdly, a self-supervised training loss function with a regularization loss is proposed to address the difference of target pixel values between neighbors on the original SAR images. Finally, visual and quantitative experiments on simulated and real-world SAR images show that the proposed algorithm notably removes speckle noise with better preserving features, which exceed several state-of-the-art despeckling methods.


1984 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Ford

Glacial landforms in the drumlin drift belt of Ireland and the Alaska Range can be identified and mapped from Seasat synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) images. Drumlins cover 60% of the Ireland scene. The width/length ratio of individual drumlins can be measured on the SAR images, allowing regional differences in drumlin shape to be mapped. This cannot be done with corresponding Landsat multispectral scanner (MSS) images because of lower spatial resolution and because of shadowing effects that vary seasonally. The Alaska scene shows the extent and nature of morphological features such as medial and lateral moraines, stagnant ice, and fluted ground moraine in glaciated valleys. Perception of these features on corresponding Landsat MSS images is limited by seasonal differences in solar illumination. Because SAR is not affected by such differences or by cloud cover, it is particularly well suited for monitoring glacial movement. The disadvantage of distorted high-relief features on Seasat SAR images can be reduced in future SAR systems by modifying the radar illumination geometry.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 2513-2517

Ship detection is a procedure which asserts in fields such as ocean and sea management, vessel detection, marine superintendence, and rein, and also can be applied to exclude extralegal actions. Remote sensing can be utilized as a potential tool for zonular and universal monitoring to attain the forenamed goals. Among the radar images, the precious datum from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is playing a serious duty in remote sensing. Howsoever, vessel detecting in heterogeneous and strong clutter is still a question in this regard. The letter points to a ship detection scheme for SAR images exploiting a segmentation-based morphological operation using entropy. In the presented scheme, the morphological operations are adopted to intercept the background and foreground in the satellite images. The method was implemented and tested on the homogenous, heterogeneous and strong clutter SAR images and the results are promising and showing that the proposed method can improve the vessel detection from homogenous and heterogeneous and strong clutter satellite images


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