DEMONSTRATING AN OPERATIONAL WORKFLOW FOR CRISIS MAPPING BASED ON SATELLITE IMAGERY

摘要

The advantages and usage of geo-information derived from Earth Observation satellites in time-critical situations have been well proven in recent decades. In particular, in the wake of natural or man-made disasters, the processing and analysing of satellite data using standard techniques can provide fast and synoptic information during the first critical stage of a crisis. At the early stage, when every minute counts, the challenge is to manage the balancing act to supply accurate and reliable information as fast as possible in a very short time frame. When natural disasters, major man-made accidents or other time-critical situations occur, the availability of geo-information is an asset that supports decisionmaking processes. This paper outlines the challenging organisational and technical aspects from the practitioner's perspective with regard to operational early response in terms of crisis mapping. The goal of this paper is to underline the crucial and critical operational aspect from the service provider's perspective, and to demonstrate a structured and coordinated workflow. Such a workflow has already been implemented with the objective of providing fast and reliable information about the overall impact of an incident to support the Common Operational Picture (COP) within the first hours and days after the occurrence of an incident. The example presented here refers to the industrial accident at the Chenjiagang Chemical Industry Park, Yancheng, China, on 21 March 2019, for which crisis mapping was performed based on Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite sensors. Suitable satellite data was acquired and delivered 3 days after the event and the generation of the corresponding crisis information was finalised within a few hours after reception of the respective satellite data at the service provider's production site. The resulting product was supplied in easy-to-use standard formats. Taking into account the very dynamic current technological evolution, an outlook is also given about the potential regarding satellite based crisis information extraction.