Wildfires are a menace that gained much of public attention during recent years' summer seasons. Images of swaths of Australian bush ablaze in January and February 2020 caught public attention as brave firefighters were carrying koala bears from the inferno. The Australian fires were followed by an exceptionally disastrous fire-season in the Western United States. [...]
When Golden Earring famously sang the lyric “We’ve got a light in the sky, radar love” all the way back in 1973, little did they know just how much those “lights” (or radars) in the sky would add to our world years later. Just like in the song “Radar Love”, industry is continually learning to [...]
Traditionally, energy savings has been a driver for building management globally. Gradually, energy benefits are becoming secondary to operational efficiency and non-energy benefits such as occupancy analytics, air quality and worker productivity. In this sense, space utilization is becoming the significant differential metric particularly in the commercial building market. As employees increasingly work from home, [...]
Citizen engagement is a complementary aspect of smart cities related to the support of greater engagement in an attempt to tap into the collective intelligence of cities as well as better understanding their daily acts and needs. Currently, a bigger priority in energy efficiency-oriented training and promotion activities is given to the implementation of modern [...]
Smart cities are based on well connected, sustainable, and resilient technologies allowing the information to be available and findable. Significant amounts of data are generated and two key trends make this data collection and availability possible: Internet of Things (IoT) and Open Data. All the smart solutions in smart cities are based on IoT where [...]
The environmental change affects cities and their inhabitants more regularly, bringing new challenges for city planners. Among those, there is a need to improve air and water quality and control noise pollution looking to create a healthy and enjoyable environment for city inhabitants. For that, environmental monitoring and management is gaining importance, as understanding and [...]
What is smart specialisation (strategy), and why is it important? The Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) is a policy concept developed as an instrument for boosting national or regional innovation, specifically focused on the strengths and the competitive advantages of a region, through enhancement of partnerships between businesses, public entities, and knowledge institutions. Registered countries and [...]
In the language of Earth Observation (EO), “in situ data” is the common denomination of data deriving from ground-based, sea-borne or air-borne monitoring systems, as well as geospatial reference or ancillary data. In situ sensors can be carried by, among others, air balloons, ground stations, or ferry boxes. In situ serves validation and calibration of [...]
Innovators seeking for new and marketable EO solutions typically combine the use of free and rich Copernicus Sentinel data with a number of important enabling technologies such as Big Data, Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things, Deep Learning or Artificial Intelligence. There are many examples of successful use of EO enabled solutions across a large [...]
Drones are increasingly used as a source of information that complements data provided by satellite-based remote sensing (e.g. Copernicus Sentinels) and eventually in-situ data sensors. These Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) enable more flexibility, increased accuracy or specific actions or analyses (e.g. hyperspectral imaging) and their rapidly growing global commercial market size in 2018 had already [...]
