Bonn, Germany
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Identification of SAR Detected Targets on Sea in Near Real Time Applications for Maritime Surveillance
Voinov, Sergey; Schwarz, Egbert; Krause, Detmar; Berg, Matthias
Remote sensing technologies are widely used in maritime surveillance applications. Nowadays, spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems provide outstanding capabilities for target detection at sea for large areas independently from the weather conditions. The generated value added target detection product is composed by complementary information from the Automatic Identification System (AIS). Resulting information layers provides a more reliable picture on the maritime situation awareness. This paper describes the approach of SAR-AIS data fusion and its visualization means developed for Near Real Time (NRT) Applications for Maritime Situational Awareness by the Maritime Security Lab at the Ground Station in Neustrelitz, part DLR’s German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD). Presented implementation is based on combination of many open source geospatial libraries and frameworks (e.g., GDAL/OGR, Geoserver, PostgresSQL) and shows their effectiveness in the context of complex automated data processing in the frame of NRT requirements.
Analysing the practical feasibility of FOSSGIS in military operations – A Cholera outbreak use case
Henrico, Susanna Jacoba; Coetzee, Serena; Cooper, Antony
Remaining ahead of the enemy in all circumstances is crucial to any military power. Geographic information systems (GIS) can provide the military commander with geospatial information about the theatre of war to assist with the planning and execution of a mission. Unfortunately, technology usually comes at a price. GIS is no exception. The cost of acquiring and maintaining GIS software licenses, as well as training staff in the use of the software, needs to be considered. The question arises whether open source software, which can be used without any software license expenses, is a feasible alternative in military operations. The problem is that the perception exists that open source GIS software is neither user-friendly nor mature enough to be used in military operations. This study evaluates the functionality of an open source desktop GIS product in a military operations use case. A list of specific GIS functionalities was compiled based on the literature study and by developing a use case. The functionalities were executed in QGIS. Results were compared against results of the same functionalities in ArcGIS, which is widely used in military operations. Results show that all GIS functions tested by this study could be performed by both software products. These results are interesting because it means that FOSSGIS can be successfully deployed by units or directorates that has limited funds available to expand the existing GIS capabilities for military operations.
Building applications with FOSS4G bricks: two examples of the use of GRASS GIS modules as a high-level “language” for the analyses of continuous space data in economic geography
Lennert, Moritz
In a world where researchers are more and more confronted to large sets of micro- data, new algorithms are constantly developed that have to be translated into usable programs. Modular GIS toolkits such as GRASS GIS offer a middle way between low-level programming approaches and GUI-based desktop GIS. The modules can be seen as elements of a programming language which makes the implementation of algorithms for spatial analysis very easy for researchers. Using two examples of algorithms in economic geography, for estimating regional exports and for determining raster-object neighbourhood matrices, this paper shows how just a few module calls can replace more complicated low-level programs, as long as the re- searcher can change perspective from a pixel-by-pixel view to a map view of the problem at hand. Combining GRASS GIS with Python as general glue between modules also offers options for easy multi-processing, as well as supporting the increasingly loud call for open research, including open source computing tools in research.
Involving communities in environmental protection by Community Information Systems: the case study of “La Cuicadora”
Vito, Domenico
The involvement of the communities is a key-strategy to enable fast responses both case of emergency and environmental protection. On this goal geospatial system could allow to collect information directly from the citizens. More specifically they can act on “feedback-loops” between “communities”, “decision-makers” and “environment” catalysing participation and the perception of local knowledge. The work will present the case study of “la Cuicadora” project, a Ushaidi based crowdmapping system provides an information sharing network to assist Peruvian indigenous communities in better protecting themselves from contaminated water sources. The analysis offers the chance to understand the concept of Community Information Systems (CIS) and its role in the involvement of communities in environmental protection.
Mapping WiFi measurements on OpenStreetMap data for Wireless Street Coverage Analysis
Valenzano, Andrea; Mana, Dario; Borean, Claudio; Servetti, Antonio
The growing interest on smart cities and the deployment of an ever increasing number of smart objects in public locations, such as dumpsters, traffic lights, and manholes, requires ubiquitous connectivity for these devices to communicate data and to receive configurations. Opportunistic WiFi connectivity is a valid alternative both to ad hoc solutions, like LoRa, which require costly deployments, and to communicating through the mobile network, which is both pricey and battery power hungry. In this paper we present a tool to analyze the WiFi coverage of home Access Points (AP) on the city streets. It can be of interest to ISP or other providers which want to offer connectivity to Internet of Things smart objects deployed around the city. We describe a method for gathering WiFi measures around the city (by leveraging crowdsourcing) and an open source visualization and analysis web application to explore the accumulated data. More importantly, this framework can leverage the semantic information contained in OpenStreetMap data to extract further knowledge about the AP deployment in the city, for example we investigate the relationship between the AP density per square kilometer within the city and the WiFi street coverage ratio.