The Serco Italy space team in Frascati hosted a 2-day International project kick-off workshop on the 6th and 7th November 2017, to launch EOPEN, the new EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation project led by Serco. The aim of EOPEN is to research and innovate how to make commercial service that is faster, more effective and efficient to how that data is processed and made available to a significantly increased range of those non-traditional users. The EOPEN project team includes partners from Germany, Greece, Finland, Belgium, Italy and South Korea.

H Ομάδα Εθελοντικής Δράσης Χίου ΟΜΙΚΡΟΝ, χρησιμοποιώντας δεδομένα από το FIREHUB, για την περίοδο 1984-2016 και βγάζοντας στατιστικά για την καμμένη έκταση στο νησί της Χίου, εξέδωσε την παρακάτω ανασκόπηση σύμφωνα με την οποία η ομάδα εργασίας προχώρησε σε δράσεις όπως οι παρακάτω:

• Καταγραφές περιοχών με «ιδιαίτερα χαρακτηριστικά»,

• Σχεδιασμό και παραγωγή πρωτότυπης παρουσίασης για τις ανάγκες ενημέρωσης των συμπολιτών μας,

• Σχεδιασμό, με την υποστήριξη του WWF Ελλάδας και τη συνεργασία του Εθνικού Αστεροσκοπείου Αθηνών, ενός (1) τρίπτυχου φυλλαδίου, μιας (1) αφίσας, ενός (1) roll up banner και 2 ταινιών μικρής διάρκειας, με σκοπό τον απολογισμό αλλά και την πρόληψη από τις φωτιές. Η ανασκόπηση της ομάδας για την αντιπυρική Περίοδο 2017 βρίσκεται εδώ.

Περισσότερες λεπτομέρειες στην ιστοσελίδα της ομάδας ΟΜΙΚΡΟΝ http://www.omikron.org.gr/

Since October 18, 2017, the National Observatory of Athens (NOA) and the Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET) operate for the European Space Agency (ESA), in collaboration with Serco and GAEL Systems, the second node of the Copernicus International Data Hub. The International Access Hub provides a dedicated access to a Rolling Archive of Sentinels satellite products. Access to this hub is provided through https://inthub2.copernicus.eu and it is restricted to the international partners (NASA, USGS, GA, NOAA) having established agreements with the European Commission.
On the 15th of November 2017, ESA representatives visited the Operations Center in Athens, Greece, in an opportunity to discuss the status of the service and its evolution in the near future. Since mid-October 2017, more than 355 TiB of Sentinel data and 470,000 products have been downloaded by the users of the International Hub.

The EO Centre of Excellence BEYOND for the monitoring of Natural Disaster which is hosted by the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), continues playing its societal role by deriving, supporting and distributing on a daily basis maps depicting the extent and the level of physical damages caused from every fire incident occurring over Greece during the fire season. The rapid mapping service of burned areas is based on satellite images of medium resolution which are collected on a 24/7 basis at the satellite stations owned and operated by the Centre (e.g. MODIS, NPP-VIIRS, NOAA/AVHRR, FY), as well as based on high resolution Sentinels II data. The latter are being collected in near real time at the Hellenic Mirror Site, under the collaboration agreement signed between NOA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The daily damages of land use/ land cover types are assessed several times a day at the medium resolution of 500-750 m, while every ten days a more detailed assessment at the much high resolution of 10m is provided. This information is delivered in real-time to the Fire Brigades Authority of Greece, and also the Local Authorities, that undertake the challenging task to immediately address and react to the crisis but also after the disaster for landscape recovery, compensation andmitigation purposes. To be noted that for specific cases of big disastrous fire events the BEYOND Center is offering its services through a specific framework contract and in collaboration with selected European partners, to the Copernicus EMS European Union Space Program for assessing the flood, landslide, and soil erosion risk in the affected by the fire areas.

Read the entire Press Release here:

 FireHUB-fire-mapping-8-8-2017-EN

The fire that occurred in Kalyvia Thorikou, Attica, at 16:25 p.m. on July 31st, 2017, was detected by the FireHub monitoring system in real time, within the first 10 minutes after the fire ignition time, using MSG SEVIRI satellite data. The service is delivered in real time to the Operations Control Room of the Hellenic Fire Brigade Authorities. In addition, the daily change of the Burned Areas (see screens in the following) was calculated automatically and mapped by the new service of FireHub within 30 minutes from satellite passing and image ingestion from the acquisition stations of BEYOND to the Data Processing Center. Another fire that occurred in the greater area of Spetses Island at 13:00 p.m. on August 1, 2017, was also detected in real time by the FireHub monitoring system, using MSG SEVIRI, SUOMI NPP, and MODIS (AQUA, TERRA) satellite data which were acquired by the BEYOND Ground Stations.

For a more detailed description of the Real Time Fire Monitoring service visit the following pdf document .

Ιn the summer of 2017 and during the fire-fighting period (1/5/2017 - 31/10/2017), the EO Centre of Excellence BEYOND for the monitoring of Natural Disasters which is hosted by the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), continued to play its societal role by deriving, supporting and distributing on a daily basis maps depicting the extent and the level of physical damages caused from every fire incident occurring over Greece.