航空遥感系统及其在自然灾害监测中的应用

本文介绍了我国自然灾害的现状,论述了航空遥感的特点,并简要论述了遥感技术在防灾、抗灾、救灾及灾害损失和影响评估中的作用。介绍了我国高空机载遥感系统的特点及其在洪水和林火监测中的应用实例和效果。     

我国航空放射性测量的进展

本文概述了我国航空放射性测量在铀矿普查中取得的地质找矿成果和今后工作设想。文中全面而简要地综述了近10年来我国航空放射性测最在仪器设备、技术方法、标定设施、资料研究和综合找矿等方面的进展情况。     

机载光阵探头探测期间云粒子的破碎

机载光阵探头探测时,云粒子(液态和固态)进入二维光阵探头的采样区前,会因与探头探测臂发生机械碰撞,或者与探头外壳产生的湍流和风切变相互作用而破碎。破碎程度与粒子类型、大小、粒子密度、探头入口设计以及飞行空速等有关。利用2008年7~9月探测飞机(Y-12)在山西省太原地区的航测资料并对飞机采样期间的云粒子破碎现象进行介绍和分析,分析结果表明,粒子到达时间间隔分布具有双模态特征:长时间模态是粒子空间分布的真实结构,短时间模态则是云粒子破碎的结果。提出用粒子到达时间间隔阈值作为粒子破碎的判定标准,给出适用于2008年太原地区航测资料的粒子破碎识别阈值,其中适合于探头云粒子成像仪(CIP)的阈值是2×10-5 s,而探头降水粒子成像仪(PIP)的阈值是1×10-4 s。所提的阈值对于以Y-12为机载探测平台,以CIP和PIP探头为探测仪器所获取的其它航次云微物理图像资料的粒子破碎处理也是有一定的参考使用价值。     

Mt. Etna volcano high-resolution topography: airborne LiDAR modelling validated by GPS data

High-resolution digital topography is essential for land management and planning in any type of territory as well as the reproduction of the Earth surface in a geocoded digital format that allows several Digital Earth applications. In a volcanic environment, Digital Elevation Models are a valid reference for multi-temporal analyses aimed to observe frequent changes of a volcano edifice and for the relative detailed morphological and structural analyses. For the first time, a DTM (Digital Terrain Model) and a DSM (Digital Surface Model) covering the entire Mt. Etna volcano (Italy) derived from the same airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) are here presented. More than 250 million 3D LiDAR points have been processed to distinguish ground elements from natural and anthropic features. The end product is the highly accurate representation of Mt. Etna landscape (DSM) and ground topography (DTM) dated 2005. Both models have a high spatial resolution of 2?m and cover an area of 620?km². The DTM has been validated by GPS ground control points. The vertical accuracy has been evaluated, resulting in a root-mean-square-error of ±?0.24?m. The DTM is available as electronic supplement and represents a valid support for various scientific studies.     

The First World War from above and below. Historical aerial photographs and mine craters in the Ypres Salient

During the First World War, ancient siege techniques were used in an attempt to break through the stalemate in the trenches. This paper approaches the mine crater war from a completely new perspective and focuses on a landscape-scale approach rather than on fragmented individual sites. Thousands of contemporary aerial photographs have been used as a primary source of information to detect and understand the historical mine crater landscape along the former Western Front in Belgium. The paper presents a methodology for dating war features by means of a time series analysis of aerial photographs, confronting this historical landscape with a high-resolution Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) dataset.     

Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 airborne infection transmission risk in public buses

Public transport environments are thought to play a key role in the spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. Indeed, high crowding indexes (i.e. high numbers of people relative to the vehicle size), inadequate clean air supply, and frequent extended exposure durations make transport environments potential hotspots for transmission of respiratory infections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, generic mitigation measures (e.g. physical distancing) have been applied without also considering the airborne transmission route. This is due to the lack of quantified data about airborne contagion risk in transport environments.In this study, we apply a novel combination of close proximity and room-scale risk assessment approaches for people sharing public transport environments to predict their contagion risk due to SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection. In particular, the individual infection risk of susceptible subjects and the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 (expressed through the reproduction number) are evaluated for two types of buses, differing in terms of exposure time and crowding index: urban and long-distance buses. Infection risk and reproduction number are calculated for different scenarios as a function of the ventilation rates (both measured and estimated according to standards), crowding indexes, and travel times. The results show that for urban buses, the close proximity contribution significantly affects the maximum occupancy to maintain a reproductive number of <1. In particular, full occupancy of the bus would be permitted only for an infected subject breathing, whereas for an infected subject speaking, masking would be required. For long-distance buses, full occupancy of the bus can be maintained only if specific mitigation solutions are simultaneously applied. For example, for an infected person speaking for 1 h, appropriate filtration of the recirculated air and simultaneous use of FFP2 masks would permit full occupancy of the bus for a period of almost 8 h. Otherwise, a high percentage of immunized persons (>80%) would be needed.     

Waveform-based point cloud classification in land-cover identification

Full-waveform topographic LiDAR data provide more detailed information about objects along the path of a laser pulse than discrete-return (echo) topographic LiDAR data. Full-waveform topographic LiDAR data consist of a succession of cross-section profiles of landscapes and each waveform can be decomposed into a sum of echoes. The echo number reveals critical information in classifying land cover types. Most land covers contain one echo, whereas topographic LiDAR data in trees and roof edges contained multi-echo waveform features. To identify land-cover types, waveform-based classifier was integrated single-echo and multi-echo classifiers for point cloud classification.The experimental area was the Namasha district of Southern Taiwan, and the land-cover objects were categorized as roads, trees (canopy), grass (grass and crop), bare (bare ground), and buildings (buildings and roof edges). Waveform features were analyzed with respect to the single- and multi-echo laser-path samples, and the critical waveform features were selected according to the Bhattacharyya distance. Next, waveform-based classifiers were performed using support vector machine (SVM) with the local, spatial features of waveform topographic LiDAR information, and optical image information. Results showed that by using fused waveform and optical information, the waveform-based classifiers achieved the highest overall accuracy in identifying land-cover point clouds among the models, especially when compared to an echo-based classifier.     

An evaluation of remote sensing derived soil pH and average spring groundwater table for ecological assessments

Ecological assessments such as species distribution modelling and benchmarking site quality towards regulations often rely on full spatial coverage information of site factors such as soil acidity, moisture regime or nutrient availability. To determine if remote sensing (RS) is a viable alternative to traditional data sources of site factor estimates, we analysed the accuracy (using ground truth validation measurements) of traditional and RS sources of pH and mean spring groundwater level (MSL, in m) estimates. Traditional sources were a soil map and hydrological model. RS estimates were obtained using vegetation indicator values (IVs) from a Dutch national system as an intermediate between site factors and spectral response. IVs relate to those site factors that dictate vegetation occurrence, whilst also providing a robust link to canopy spectra. For pH, the soil map and the RS estimate were nearly as accurate. For MSL, the RS estimates were much closer to the observed groundwater levels than the hydrological model, but the error margin of the estimates still exceeded the tolerance range of moisture sensitive vegetation. The relatively high accuracy of the RS estimates was made possible by the availability of local calibration points and large environmental gradients in the study site. In addition, the error composition of the RS estimates could be analysed step-by-step, whereas the traditional sources had to be accepted ‘as-is’. Also considering that RS offers high spatial and temporal resolution at low costs, RS offered advantages over traditional sources. This will likely hold true for any other situation where prerequisites of accurate RS estimates have been met.     

A comparison of the midlevel kinematic characteristics of a pair of supercell thunderstorms observed by airborne Doppler radar

The midlevel kinematic characteristics of two supercell thunderstorms observed during the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Tornadoes Experiment (VORTEX), one tornadic and the other nontornadic, are compared using airborne pseudo-dual-Doppler wind retrievals. The most significant difference between the two cases was that a midlevel rear-inflow jet was observed in the nontornadic supercell (12 May 1995), whereas such rear-to-front, storm-relative flow was absent at midlevels in the tornadic supercell (16 May 1995). The midlevel jet in the nontornadic supercell was located on the north flank of a prominent region of anticyclonic vertical vorticity. Some speculations are provided pertaining to the possible importance of the midlevel kinematic differences between the two storms.     

Airborne microorganisms: Their occurrence,distribution and dependence on environmental factors — Especially on organic compounds of air-pollution

For a period of approximately six months the concentrations of airborne microorganisms were determined by the uptake of their day-characteristic at local places differing by the extent of air pollution. By simultaneously recording the meteorological parameters as temperature, relative humidity, direction and velocity of wind and intensity of solar radiation, it was intended to find out the relationship between these factors and the viability of airborne microorganisms. The present data show an oscillation of the concentration counts over a wide range and seem not yet to depend on the local situation of air pollution.In a further series of experiments the atmospheric aerosol <10 m was collected on air-filters. The decreased substances were extracted from the filter material by aqueous and organic solutants and tested for their antimicrobial activities. In this context the seasonal dependence of the microbicidal activity of organic compounds of aerosol is discussed.