Abstract
The goal of the two year Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations-Digital Repositories (GENESI-DR) project was to build an open and seamless access service to Earth science digital repositories for European and world-wide science users. In order to showcase GENESI-DR, one of the developed technology demonstrators focused on fast search, discovery, and access to remotely sensed imagery in the context of post-disaster building damage assessment. This paper describes the scenario and implementation details of the technology demonstrator, which was developed to support post-disaster damage assessment analyst activities. Once a disaster alert has been issued, response time is critical to providing relevant damage information to analysts and/or stakeholders. The presented technology demonstrator validates the GENESI-DR project data search, discovery and security infrastructure and integrates the rapid urban area mapping and the near real-time orthorectification web processing services to support a post-disaster damage needs assessment analysis scenario. It also demonstrates how the GENESI-DR SOA can be linked to web processing services that access grid computing resources for fast image processing and use secure communication to ensure confidentiality of information.
Highlights
When disaster strikes over a populated area, geospatial information about the state of the afflicted region is paramount
The following needed to be implemented: 1. The Near-Realtime Orthorectification (NOR) and Urban Area Mapping (UAM) applications were already regularly applied at the JRC but needed to be served via a Web Processing Service (WPS) turning them into services; 2
The team decided to serve the two applications via a WPS in order to ensure interoperability because the applications were routinely applied at the JRC but installed on different machines, on separate networks running in customised environments, and built with different technologies
Summary
When disaster strikes over a populated area, geospatial information about the state of the afflicted region is paramount. Sensed imagery acquired by satellites are usually among the first types of image data made available to analysts to produce maps. The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) is involved in post-disaster damage assessment analysis both inside and outside the European Union. Primary analysis is based on remotely sensed imagery using both pre- and post-disaster images whereby analysts identify damage extent and severity. Soon after the team has been alerted to a disaster, the following scenario is generally played out as quickly as humanly possible: 1. Search and download pre-disaster imagery if available; 3. Order/Acquire and download post-disaster imagery as soon as possible; 4. Analyse pre- and post-disaster imagery to identify affected populated areas; 5. Produce and disseminate maps and reports to stakeholders based on the most current available information
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