-01.svg)
pen Cosmos, along with partners i2CAT and the Cartographic & Geological Institute of Catalonia (ICGC), have announced the completion of their year-long study into the use of satellite imagery for a territory monitoring and alerting system. The project is part of the INNOTEC 2021 grant program promoted by ACCIÓ.
The EOSMS project, which stands for Earth Observation Smart Monitoring System, was developed to demonstrate the capability of DataCosmos (Open Cosmos data platform) as an intelligent territory monitoring system. The user case centred around crop irrigation management and the requirements for a software system that could acquire and process satellite images and, in combination with ground sensor data, detect changes in soil moisture, forecast and provide timely alerts.
Through the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) which quantifies the health of vegetation in a region, DataCosmos was able to determine the relative health of fields compared to other similar fields in the area. This was then combined with radar data which measured the levels of moisture in the soil. Together, the visible and radar imagery created an instant picture of the health of the fields and identified the reserves of soil moisture available. When either of these measures fell below a predetermined threshold, an alert was sent to the user. This would allow the user to make an informed decision on the watering needs of their fields.
During the project, Open Cosmos was able to utilise their proprietary data analysis platform DataCosmos. Fusion of the various data sources relied on DataCosmos’ standardised data formats aligned with the geospatial community’s preferred open standards, such as SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog (STAC) and Cloud Optimised GeoTIFFs (COGs). The applications platform in DataCosmos was used to run the algorithms which calculated field health and soil moisture metrics, combining those insights into an alert for the user. Finally, the results of the analysis were displayed with DataCosmos’ visualisation tools for both raster and vector data.
Using the combined expertise of the data scientists from ICGC and i2Cat, multi-spectral images from Sentinel-2 and SAR images from Sentinel-1, Open Cosmos and partners were able to demonstrate success in the areas of ‘acquiring’, ‘processing’ and ‘detecting’. This means that DataCosmos was able to acquire data, process it and then detect anomalies.
Bartomeu Massuti, mission concept engineer says:
“The EOSMS project was conceived as a proof of concept for an ambitious solution to address critical challenges for society and towards sustainable development. The interdisciplinary team that we built led to significant improvements in the tools that will make this solution a reality, shortening the time to market and maximising the impact to society.”
