The world was recently shaken by the floods that abruptly came upon large parts of Germany and other European countries. All-natural disasters cause devastating effects; however, floods in particular result in a large amount of destruction of property, displacement of human beings, and deaths. In such cases, it becomes important to be equipped with a real-time monitoring system on hand that can facilitate in providing authorities with the present condition on the ground and changes that occur with time.
Thus, to enable this feat, so that such scenarios are handled better in the future, researchers have developed a new model for flood detection based on neural networks. The technology is being referred to as “WorldFloods” and has been recently launched into space by an aerospace company known as D-Orbit, situated in Cape Canaveral. The system is a huge advancement for Real-Time Flood Monitoring and Warning Systems Market as it would facilitate accelerated response to flood episodes by enabling near-real-time terrain maps. In addition, it would also reduce the cost of technology.
When it comes to flooding, being able to observe the Earth from space provides critical information for decision-making by authorities covering the ground operations. Large groups of small nanosatellites, known as the CubeSats might be a promising solution towards reducing revisitation time from days to hours. The time would be based on how long a sensor takes to re-cover a location submerged in disaster. However, on the downside, data transmission to terrestrial receivers is still at the mercy of the power and bandwidth restrictions of the cubes.
The WorldFloods model has been developed at the ESD-funded FDL-Europe research incubator. Thus, the system incorporates advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) algorithms that enable information to be processed on board. Such a method of Onboard processing brings forth a solution that can successfully decrease the amount of data that needs to be transmitted by simply reducing large images from sensors to small data products.
On 30th June 2020, WorldFloods was launched from Cape Canaveral into space by the company D-Orbit on the Space X rocket “Falcon 9”. Till now, D-Orbit has managed to launch six CubeSats of different companies. Among these is Nebula(1 kg mass satellite) that hosts WorldFloods and is the first reiteration of an in-orbit processing service merged with radiation-tolerant chips, in which AI advanced algorithms can be easily implemented.