Research – Remote Sensing
Thermal alerts
The Laboratory of Experimental Geophysics for the Department of National Civil Protection has developed in recent years a system for real-time analysis that, based on satellite images, it provides an immediate picture of the thermal state of the Italian territory.
The damage caused by a fire is highly dependent on the time elapsed between the birth of the outbreak of departure and the communication of the alarm. This raises the need to work as quickly as possible in order to mitigate the damage to property and people. The satellite monitoring provides from this point of view a good solution in reducing the response times of the competent authorities in emergency act. For this purpose are used satellite images from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ) aboard two polar-orbiting satellites Terra (EOS AM) and Aqua (EOS PM).
In order to recognize and characterize in the shortest time possible thermal alerts on Italian territory, has developed a system of automatic processing of MODIS satellite images of the Italian territory.
The system automatically produces a map of the temperature on the ground and in the sea of the Italian territory and in case the image is acquired during the day, is also produced the image of the Italian territory in the visible component.
The results derived from the processing system MODIS images are displayed by a program developed by this Center of Competence and published on the Internet for viewing.