Satellite Missions Improve Water Estimates
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- 17 June 2013 | By Matteo Luccio | 186
This feature originally appeared in the inaugural issue of Apogeo Spatial magazine (formerly Imaging Notes).
According to a recent United Nations report, stresses on water supplies aggravated by climate change are likely to cause more conflicts, and water should be considered as vital to national security as defense. The report points out that 145 countries share watersheds with neighbors and there are more than 300 transboundary aquifers from which groundwater can be extracted.
Quick and in 3D: High-resolution Aerial Photos for Disaster Response and Recovery
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- 28 May 2013 | By Christine Broenner | 547
In my work supporting disaster response operations, I have often heard practitioners say, “Where can we quickly get detailed and up-to-date map from?” Chris Hepp, by profession a medical doctor, faced the same issue when deployed on humanitarian and peacekeeping missions with international organizations to Albania, the Kosovo, Rwanda and Haiti. He recognized the value that visual spatial information can add to disaster response and recovery, and he decided to do something about it. Hepp founded Aerial Photos in Disasters Emergencies and Recovery (APDER), a small NGO based in Barcelona, Spain, with the aim to support coordination and planning processes with visual spatial information before, during and after disasters.
Sensing the Forest for Fuel, Fire and Recovery
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- 06 May 2013 | By Matteo Luccio | 1486
Every year, several hundred million hectares of forest, grasslands, and other types of vegetation burn throughout the world, and this amount is set to increase due to climate change. Wildfires pose a challenge for ecosystem management because they can be both harmful—threatening human life, property, economic activity and contributing to climate change—and beneficial—by regulating plant succession and fuel accumulation, affecting populations of insects and diseases, influencing nutrient cycles, and in many other ways we still struggle to understand.
Using Geospatial Solutions for Effective Environmental Monitoring
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- 21 April 2013 | By Amy Zeller | 1652
Organizations responsible for environmental monitoring, especially when it comes to ‘smart development’ in environmentally sensitive areas, are increasingly using the right geospatial data, tools and processes to ensure minimal impact.
What and Where: The Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS
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- 05 March 2013 | By Matteo Luccio | 11392
The sciences, technologies, and practices of remote sensing and of geographic information systems (GIS) arose separately, developed in parallel, intersected, and are now inextricably linked. Nearly all the features in most GIS are collected by means of satellite imagery or aerial photogrammetry, and GIS is the application where this imagery is most commonly visualized. “All the foundation elements of GIS come from remote sensing: cultural features, roads, buildings, water features, topography, terrain, soils, slopes, geology, and many more,” points out Lawrie Jordan, Director of Imagery at Esri.