UDOS
Using satellite data and ML to monitor land surface processes
Background
Scientific studies have proven the feasibility of monitoring urban structures by satellite data from various sensors. This can help to satisfy their customers’ need to get ready-to-use information about urban dynamics down to the individual propertylevel, without the hassle of having the experience and the knowledge in processing satellite images.
Accurate information about the current extent of built-up areas and their change over time is not only crucial for sustainable urban development but also relevant for commercial applications in different
industries (e.g., real estate). In that context, the start-up ubicube GmbH developed a promising pilot base service: the highresolution built-up detection with continuous/regular monitoring.
With UDOS, ubicube tends to develop this system further and certify its transferability and its extensibility to larger geographic areas.
Challenge
The overall aim is to produce an urban extent monitoring system with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolutions that can be used for various use cases from the national to the local scale, enabling insights down to the individual property level.
EOSC services used
In the pilot the C-SCALE Compute and Data Federation services were used to improve, scale, and validate ubicubes’ satellite data enabled urban dynamics monitoring service.
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Results
After a mapping exercise, revised service prototypes were created and presented to a set of potential clients to gather their initial feedback. Implementation sprints through C-SCALE services improved and optimised the application, including design revisions. The full scale development cycle has been completed, with a final round of feedback ensuring the processing pipeline for the fullscale service is optimised, and the service has been launched. A SAR Coherence processing pipeline is implemented. The overall processing time has been significantly reduced.
Impact
The pilot resulted in an upgrade of TRL4 to TRL6. A system prototype demonstration in an operational environment was executed. The urban monitoring system was improved, and finally, using C-SCALE
services helped ubicube reinforce the strategic decision that they need to outsource all processing to the cloud.
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