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Την 1η Μαρτίου 2021, η Περιφέρεια Αττικής, το Εθνικό Αστεροσκοπείο Αθηνών (ΕΑΑ) και το Εθνικό και Καποδιστριακό Πανεπιστήμιο Αθηνών (ΕΚΠΑ), ένωσαν τις δυνάμεις τους υπογράφοντας τριμερή Προγραμματική Σύμβαση, με στόχο τη προστασία του πολίτη και του περιβάλλοντος από τις φυσικές καταστροφές και συγκεκριμένα, το Κέντρο Επιστημών Παρατήρησης της Γης και Δορυφορικής Τηλεπισκόπησης BEYOND του Εθνικού Αστεροσκοπείου Αθηνών, θα εκπονήσει έρευνα με τίτλο «Εκτίμηση κινδύνων Σεισμού, Πυρκαγιάς και Πλημμυρών στην Περιφέρεια Αττικής».

Η Περιφέρεια Αττικής θα αξιοποιήσει το έμπειρο επιστημονικό προσωπικό και την τεχνολογία αιχμής του Κέντρου Αριστείας BEYOND του Ινστιτούτου Αστρονομίας, Αστροφυσικής και Διαστημικών Εφαρμογών (ΙΑΑΔΕΤ) του ΕΑΑ, το οποίο θα συντάξει λεπτομερείς μελέτες κινδύνων από πυρκαγιά, πλημμύρα και σεισμό, και θα διαμορφώσει ένα αποτελεσματικό σχέδιο αντιμετώπισής τους  σε μια σειρά Δήμων της Περιφέρειας που επιλέχθηκαν με κριτήριο την τρωτότητα στους συγκεκριμένους κινδύνους.

Έρευνες αυτού του τύπου, για πολλαπλούς φυσικούς κινδύνους και σε κλίμακα οικισμού, θα διεξαχθούν για πρώτη φορά στη χώρα μας. Μέσω του έργου αυτού θα επιτευχθεί η δημιουργία πρωτότυπης γνώσης προς υποστήριξη της Περιφέρειας Αττικής στη βέλτιστη εφαρμογή του προβλεπόμενου Εθνικού Σχεδιασμού Πολιτικής Προστασίας και στην υποστήριξη του έργου των Συντονιστικών Οργάνων Πολιτικής Προστασίας.

Όμως γιατί επιλέχθηκε η Αττική για μια τέτοια έρευνα, ποιο είναι το πλαίσιο αυτής της συνεργασίας, ποια θα είναι τα αποτελέσματα του έργου και γιατί επιλέχθηκε το Κέντρο Επιστημών Παρατήρησης της Γης και Δορυφορικής Τηλεπισκόπησης BEYOND του ΕΑΑ/ΙΑΑΔΕΤ να είναι ένας από τους βασικούς φορείς υλοποίησης; Τελικά υπάρχουν επιστημονικά εργαλεία που μπορούν να συνεισφέρουν στην πολιτική προστασία; Οι απαντήσεις στα συγκεκριμένα ερωτήματα βρίσκονται παρακάτω:

pdf iconDownload the English version of the press release here

networkingBEYOND Center of Excellence covers the spectrum of coordination and support actions (CSA) in GEO domain. The Center is participating in important actions and strategies such as networking activities; exchange actions; cross-border access to open data and research infrastructure; studies; conferences; capacity building and training activities; EO roadmaps; and other relevant activities that leads and/or are being the basis of new research and developments at EU and international level.

In Horizon 2020, the EC wanted to simplify the list of possible types of actions, and so the various collaborative project actions have been reduced to two major types: 'Innovation actions' and 'Research and Innovation actions' (R&I).

R&I actions have research and development (R&D) activities as the core of the project, which intend to establish new scientific and technical knowledge and/or explore the feasibility of a new or improved technology, product, process, service or solution. These activities may furthermore:

  • include basic and applied research, technology development and integration, testing and validation on a small-scale prototype in a laboratory or simulated environment.
  • contain closely connected but limited demonstration or pilot activities aiming to show technical feasibility in a near to operational environment. 

agricultureAgriculture monitoring, for the purposes of food security, control of the implementation of sustainable agriculture policies and the improvement of the overall agricultural productivity, is a top priority for the European Union. In this broad domain, BEYOND Center of Excellence has advanced its technical capacities in the development of tailored Earth Observation (EO) based services for agriculture monitoring, addressing the diverse thematic areas of food security, monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and smart/precision farming.

More specifically the Center has successfully applied and developed state-of-the-art algorithms, machine learning and AI techniques.

The BEYOND team, within the framework of the H2020 project RECAP, has developed a fully automated earth observation system for the monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Specifically, RECAP aims to improve the remote monitoring of CAP Cross Compliance and Greening obligations to assist the Paying Agency inspection processes and at the same time offer farmers a tool supporting them to understand and better comply with the rules. In RECAP, we collected and analyzed datasets from the various Paying Agencies, members of the consortium. Utilizing this unique data received by the Paying Agencies and Copernicus Sentinel data (Sentinel-2) we have developed a novel parcel-based machine learning processing workflow for classifying crops, therefore directly addressing the crop diversification requirements of the CAP. We have also developed a runoff risk assessment, at parcel level, according to the Statutory Management Requirements (SMR 1) of the policy. Finally, we have developed a burn scar-mapping algorithm for the detection of stubble burning (GAEC 6), using Sentinel-2 data. Our work in RECAP has been published in http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/6/911.

The BEYOND team now seeks to extend and scale up the application of the RECAP crop monitoring scheme. This will be done by incorporating big data technologies and other mature ICT solutions for the monitoring of Food Security at national and even continental scales, this time under the scope of the H2020 project EOPEN (rice production in South Korea). Fusion of Sentinel-1 (SAR polarimetry) and Sentinel-2 data is explored, for the generation of very dense temporal profiles. In EOPEN we address the notion of big data in multiple dimensions; with respect to 1) the area of application - national and international scale, 2) the spatial resolution of thematic information, 3) the volume of data (national scale mosaics of dense time-series of S-1 and S-2), 4) computational efficiency (big data processing technologies).

 

procurementBEYOND Center of Excellence has also competences in Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) and other procurement schemes in the GEO domain, in which among many assignments it gathers, analyzes and evaluates needs from the demand side (e.g. Public Authorities) and formalize them into requirements (e.g. set of use cases, Functional and not Functional requirements, metrics etc.). Hence, the main objective is to procure the development of those requirements and in parallel to safeguard incremental or radical innovation in the relevant domain (e.g. Marine, Civil Protection), by leveraging on existing Copernicus Services and other products from the Copernicus portfolio (e.g. raw data, DWH etc.).

In Horizon 2020, the EC wanted to simplify the list of possible types of actions, and so the various collaborative project actions have been reduced to two major types: 'Innovation actions' and 'Research and Innovation actions' (R&I).

The Innovation actions primarily consist of activities directly aiming at producing plans and arrangements or designs for new, altered or improved products, processes or services. They may include prototyping, testing, demonstrating, piloting, large-scale product validation and market replication

solarThe EU revised Renewable Energy Directive establishes an overall policy for the production and promotion of energy from renewable sources in the EU. It requires the EU to fulfill at least 27% of its total energy needs with renewables by 2030 – to be achieved through the attainment of individual national targets. The directive promotes cooperation amongst EU countries (and with countries outside the EU) to help them meet their renewable energy targets through innovative actions and products that are targeting on the maximization of renewable (e.g. solar) energy exploitation. Within the BEYOND Center of Excellence a nowcasting system and short term forecasting system for solar energy exploitation has been developed using advanced technical capacities of Earth Observation (EO) based services in combination with scientific measurement and radiative transfer and neural network modeling results. The system (SENSE) has been already demonstrated and used within the Geo-Cradle EU funded project and targets, transmission and distribution energy operators in a European, Middle East and north Africa domains, private and national bodies, ministries and related stakeholders and the public through public awareness systems and initiatives.

  1. Climate
  2. Disasters
  3. Epidemics
  4. Capacity Building

Subcategories

Disasters