9.1 Geomatica per la gestione delle emergenze

FLOOD-RISK MITIGATION IN THE SOLIETTE RIVER BASIN: AN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION INITIATIVE (HAITI, DOMINICAN REP., ITALY)

Alessio Domenghetti – Scuola di Ingegneria, Università di Bologna (Stefano Gandolfi, Maurizio Barbarella, Attilio Castellarin -  Scuola di Ingegneria, Università di Bologna; Luigia Brandimarte, Giuliano Di Baldassarre - UNESCO-IHE, Delft, The Netherlands)

Isla Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), one of the poorest regions of the planet, has repeatedly been hit by catastrophic natural disasters that caused incalculable economic losses and killed thousands of people. One striking example is the disastrous flood-event that occurred in the transnational basin of River Soliette on May 24th, 2004. The event was produced by a severe tropical storm originated over the Caribbean Sea from an intense low-pressure system, and killed over 1000 Haitian and Dominican people, wiping out a number of rural villages. The General Direction for Development and Cooperation of the Italian Department of Foreign Affairs funded through the Istituto Italo-Latino Americano (IILA, www.iila.org) an international cooperation initiative (ICI), coordinated and directed by the University of Bologna. The initiative involved Haitian and Dominican institutions and consisted in two main components: (a) institutional capacity building on flood risk management and mitigation measures and policies; (b) hydrological and hydraulic analysis of the May 2004 flood event aimed at formulating a suitable and affordable flood risk mitigation plan. The second component of the cooperation is the focus of this paper and particular, starting from some logistical and technical constrains, a topographic survey based on GNSS technology enabled us, in a short time, to survey river cross sections and construct Digital Elevation Models for two areas where to conduct numerical hydraulic modelling and to pre-design hypothetic flood-risk mitigation measures. The paper reports and discusses the main phases of the project.

FAST TERRAIN MODELING FOR HYDROGEOLOGICAL RISK MAPPING AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: THE CONTRIBUTION OF HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE SAR IMAGERY

Andrea Nascetti – Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e Ambientale, Area Geodesia e Geomatica, Università di Rome La Sapienza (Paola Capalbo, Martina Porfiri, Francesca Pieralice, Francesca Fratarcangeli, Luca Benenati, Mattia Crespi - Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e Ambientale, Area Geodesia e Geomatica, Università di Rome La Sapienza)

Geomatic tools for fast terrain modelling play a relevant role for hydrogeological risk mapping and emergency management. Among these tools, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite systems may give important contributions in terms of Digital Surface Models (DSMs) and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs), considering their complete independence from logistic constraints on the ground (as for airborne data collection), illumination (daylight) and weather (clouds) conditions. Here we focus on the present potentialities of high resolution SAR satellite imagery for DSMs generation with the radargrammetric stereo-mapping approach and with the well-known InSAR technique. In this respect, the aim of this work is just methodological, devoted to illustrate both the fundamental advantages of radargrammetric approach and also its drawbacks with respect to the InSAR technique for Digital Surface Models generation, and to outline their possible role for hydrogeological risk mapping and emergency management. As regards the pros, it is worth to mention the independence from image coherence (unlike InSAR approach), the parsimony (it can work with just a couple of images), and therefore the short time required for imagery collection (from tens of minutes to few hours), also thanks to the mentioned independence from illumination and weather. Concerning the cons, the well known deformations of SAR imagery (layover and foreshortening) may cause remarkable difficulties with complex morphologies. Here we discuss the results obtained using our original suite SISAR following the two mentioned approaches applied to a COSMO-SkyMed SpotLight triplet, specifically acquired over San Francisco area (United States). Global accuracies are around 5 meters for both the approaches, but several differences in the terrain morphology reconstruction have been underlined, and a possible way to further enhance the results is also delineated, through a possible integration of radargrammetry and InSAR.

GEOMATICS AND PORTABLE GIS FOR DATA COLLECTING AND COUNTRY PLANNIG IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Luigi Perotti – Geositlab – GIS and Geomatics Laboratory - NatRisk Interdipartimental Centre, Università degli Studi di Torino (Gianni Balestro, Marco Giardino - Geositlab – GIS and Geomatics Laboratory - NatRisk Interdipartimental Centre, Università degli Studi di Torino; Marco Bertotto - AGIRE - Agenzia Italiana per la Risposta alle Emergenze – Roma; Luca Ghiraldi - Regione Piemonte - Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali ed Ecomusei)

Collection and sharing of data have radically changed in the Digital Era, and advances in ICT increasingly involve field-based activities. New tools in digital acquisition of spatial data are continuously developed. New methodological approaches in storing and sharing field information are implemented. Progresses in these researches and applications depend on three main components: hardware, software and web system. In the last few years several projects involving Humanitarian Organization have been set up in developing counties including activities of data collection and analisys by using new Geomatics technologies. The hardware component mainly consists of the availability of handheld mobile devices (e.g. smartphones and PDAs) that have become cheaper and more powerful, especially for via-GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) capturing of data. The software component corresponds to wide-spreading applications for spatial data visualization on mobile devices, such as composite mobile GIS (Geographic Information Systems) or simple location-based apps. Since hardware and software components are now actually operative for fieldwork, traditional paper-based collection and mapping of geological data are being replaced by digital ones.  A further innovation comes from current development and spread of web-mobile applications and enterprise GIS solutions and SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructures), an integration of web component in digital fieldworks and geodatabases. Examples will be presented about Data Collection being now supported by client-server communication and SDI: results shows information can be easily loaded, uploaded and shared. An important implication is that standard methods for digital acquisition of data (e.g. forms and field databases) can be shared between field staff and centrally managed. Data obtained from field work allow to arrange maps and SDI useful for many purposes from country-planning to disaster risk management.

UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS FOR DATA ACQUISITIONS IN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

Andrea Lingua – Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Ambiente, del Territorio e delle Infrastrutture, Politecnico di Torino (Filiberto Chiabrando, Irene Aicardi, Marco Piras - Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Ambiente, del Territorio e delle Infrastrutture, Politecnico di Torino)

The potentiality of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has already been proved by the military community, which has employed aircrafts without men onboard for reconnaissance missions and attack operations in the enemy field. The technological progress in the electronical and aerospace engineering fields allowed the development of low-cost UAVs characterized by a small size (mini-UAVs), that can carry onboard imaging or non-imaging sensors. These advantageous features led the civil community to have an increasing interest in mini-UAVs. The excellent flight performances, the suitability for various types of missions, the inexpensiveness, and the capability to carry onboard different sensors, allow mini-UAVs to be employed in various missions. Nowadays, these systems allow to carry out missions in the following fields: land monitoring, remote sensing, agricolture and public security. Also the photogrammetric community has taken part to the research issues concerning the use of UAVs for map production.

The research group of Geomatics of the Politecnico di Torino has developed a set of interchangeable pods that can be mounted on a mini-UAV (an Hexacopter by Mikrokopter) devoted to emergency management in case of environmental disasters. This instrument is a low-cost mini-UAV equipped with photogrammetric sensors and capable of autonomous navigation (real time GNSS/IMU) and automatic digital image acquisition (characterized by a suitable geometric and radiometric quality). The platform is easily transportable on normal aircrafts and usable on the field, autonomously, by a couple of operators. The main innovation is to permits a real direct photogrammetric surveys in remote and disaster-affected areas in a short-range operative zone where it is not possible to carry out traditional photogrammetric flights. The acquisition technique allows the update of existing maps. Nevertheless, some test flights and practical applications have been performed in order to assess the autonomous flight performances and the suitability for photogrammetric flights.

UNA RETE UNIVERSITARIA E UN’ASSOCIAZIONE DEDICATA ALL’USO DEL TERILEVAMENTO IN CASO DI CALAMITÀ: UNA ESPERIENZA DI MAPPATURA PARTECIPATA IN OCCASIONE DEL TERREMOTO DI HAITI DEL 2010

Gabriele Bitelli - AUTeC, Associazione Universitari di Topografia e Cartografia (Piero Boccardo, Fabio Giulio Tonolo - ITHACA, Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action; Benedetto Villa - AUTeC,  Associazione Universitari di Topografia e Cartografia)

Nell’immediato frangente del terremoto di Haiti del gennaio 2010, su invito della Associazione ITHACA è stata messa in atto una collaborazione con l’Associazione italiana dei Docenti Universitari di Topografia e Cartografia al fine di supportare in tempi molto stretti una mappatura che fosse di ausilio alla organizzazione dei soccorsi.
L’esperienza ha coinvolto numerose sedi universitarie italiane nelle quali docenti di Geomatica hanno realizzato piccoli gruppi di lavoro di utenti esperti volontari (ricercatori, dottorandi, laureandi) in una innovativa esperienza di fotointerpretazione su immagini aeree e satellitari ad alta risoluzione operando in ambiente Google Earth.
Il coordinamento di ITHACA ha consentito di dividere il territorio di interesse, incentrato principalmente sulla capitale Port Au Prince, secondo un grigliato regolare, in modo da suddividere lo sforzo su più utenti che potessero operare in modo autonomo e concorrente, massimizzando l’area di studio e minimizzando il tempo dell’intero intervento, che è risultato molto ridotto. Il tema che è stato affrontato è stato principalmente quello delle infrastrutture di trasporto danneggiate e dei ricoveri temporanei.
L’attività ha richiesto un breve momento di formazione degli operatori - peraltro utenti esperti e non utenti comuni come nel caso di altre esperienze di mappatura in momenti di crisi - che hanno generato un layer vettoriale di punti di interesse dall’attento esame di un database di immagini aeree e satellitari ad alta risoluzione acquisite nei giorni immediatamente successivi al sisma e messe a disposizione da Google Inc. oltre che da NOAA e Digital Globe, appoggiandosi anche, nel caso di situazioni ambigue o di difficile interpretazione, alle potenzialità del sistema Google Earth di potere esplorare immagini satellitari pre-evento. Il risultato è confluito in una mappa realizzata dal World Food Program ed utilizzata da vari organismi umanitari.

EVALUATION OF TRMM SATELLITE DATA FOR MAPPING MONTHLY PRECIPITATION IN PAKISTAN BY COMPARISON WITH LOCALLY AVAILABLE DATA

Muhammad Adnan Shahid - ITHACA-Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action, Politecnico di Torino (Walther Cámaro García, Adriana Albanese, Elena Cristofori -ITHACA, Politecnico di Torino)

Increase in global average temperatures, widespread snowmelt and rising of global average sea level are important evidences of climate change, causing severe changes in the spatial and temporal rainfall patterns and increasing the frequency of related natural disasters like floods and droughts. This scenario increases the importance of satellite data for effective monitoring and forecasting of such disasters. Such data become more valuable in case of less developed countries where there is limited availability of local data. The open source and most commonly used data for detecting critical rainfall events are taken from Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA). However, it is important to have a comparison of TRMM based rainfall patterns for a region with those based on locally available data. In this paper, evaluation of monthly precipitation maps, developed on district level using TRMM data for Pakistan will be presented in comparison to the local data. For this purpose, TRMM average monthly rainfall calculated from historical monthly rainfall data (3B43) from 1998 to 2012 were used in combination with the vector file of local administrative/district boundaries. Superimposition of the two layers with defining proper statistical parameters resulted in estimating average monthly rainfall for each administrative division. Among all the pixels covering an administrative division, pixel with maximum rainfall value was selected as representative of monthly average rainfall for that administrative division. Comparison of these developed maps will be made with those developed using local rainfall data to test the accuracy and scope of TRMM data and develop correction factors, if any, for use in different geographic and climatological zones of Pakistan. This will help in monitoring the disasters, especially floods, with more accuracy and confidence.