Challenge with Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya (ICGC)

CALL 1: IMPROVE THE STUDY OF THE CATALAN COASTLINE USING EARTH OBSERVATION TECHNOLOGY

Goal

The aim of this call is to find technological solutions that provide a better knowledge of the evolution of the Catalan coastline through the analysis of satellite images.

Description

Since 2007, ICGC has carried out annual flights to monitor the Catalan coast with LIDAR image sensors and, occasionally, with hyperspectral sensors. In addition to the annual ones, other flights are planned after adverse weather events. These flights allow for generating images with useful information to other areas of the Generalitat de Catalunya, such as the Direcció General de Polítiques de Muntanya i del Litoral.

Direcció General de Polítiques de Muntanya i del Litoral within Generalitat de Catalunya is the body that uses the images with coastline information. This area is in charge of carrying out studies and assessments of the Catalan coast, and especially of the beaches, so as to facilitate decision-making on the occupation of these, and to recommend environmental actions that improve the resilience and resistance of the coast against spaces occupation and the effects of climate change on the coast.

In order to conduct the assessments, the Direcció General de Polítiques de Muntanya i del Litoral needs to study the coastline’s state, that is, the state of the submerged and emerged coastal areas. On this point, images must provide:

• The state of the emerged or dry beach and its volume, and the detection and evolution of its area and volume.
• The state of the submerged beach up to –10 meters level to know sand’s reservoir that feeds the beach, and its volume.

As a result, beaches’ resilience and vulnerability can be determined.

Currently, Direcció General de Polítiques de Muntanya i del Litoral requires higher data frequency that will allow them to carry out historical and predictive studies of the evolution of the beaches, in order to make recommendations for the usage and conservation of the coast. This entails obtaining more and better data from the coast to improve its evaluation.

Therefore, this call requests solutions focused on:

• Increasing the frequency of information on the state of the coastline with satellite images. This frequency must be higher than the current one, that is monitoring once a year.
• Improving bathymetry by increasing its temporal resolution.
• Increasing the coastline data in order to carry out a historical study of the coastline evolution.
• Providing images and data in a manageable and vectorized format, which allows an analysis of the line as a graphic entity and cross-check it with other environmental geoinformation data.
• Finding architectures that allow an extraction as automatic as possible, without artifacts, from open Earth observation satellite data, to improve the temporal resolution and latency in obtaining a new, if necessary, a line or definition from the emerged and submerged part.

For further information of this call, visit the following video: https://youtu.be/fjIQycQPrlc