Wednesday 23 December 2015

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year

Not a bad year at all - some good luck with funding applications, three papers published, lectures on two modules finished and joined a new professional body - all wrapped off with a KFM talk on how Santa finds your house.

I love Christmas.

Roll on 2016.


Thursday 17 December 2015

Flood Maps and Copernicus Emergency Services

I normally try and limit myself to 4 or 5 posts a month so I don't use all the content up, but with a week still to go until the Christmas break, so much is happening right now that I can't save it all until the new year. Drone regulation updates, Innovation 2020, an updated Marine Mapping Atlas - but undoubtedly the top story of the month is the severe flooding around the countryside, and particularly near Limerick (Parteen Weir). It is good to see the Copernicus Emergency Services in action and providing tangible benefits to the Irish taxpayer as it is their money that goes into ESA.





These images are generally pre-event optical used as a reference and post-event SAR highlighting the extent flooding, either Sentinel 1a, or Terra-SAR X among others. Unsurprisingly in periods of bad weather, the view from optical satellites such as Sentinel 2a is obscured by cloud throughout the whole event - so the weather independent benefits of SAR are highlighted once again. Almost daily reports from Copernicus Emergency Services are available once the service is activated, providing response teams and other organisations with updated info. Here is an example.





A valuable resource.

Monday 14 December 2015

Paper Published on Satellite Prediction

I am very pleased that this paper was just published.

Combining 2D Mapping and Low Density Elevation Data in a GIS for GNSS Shadow Prediction.

I designed a method for using OSi vector data and some basic elevation data, in conjunction with satellite prediction software and a GIS to plan mobile GNSS surveys. 'Mobile' had been in the original title but it came out during the review process. I tested it around the campus and it performed really well - even without vegetation.




The main reason I am pleased is that it is my first paper as sole author (ERC here I come - I finally have the paper requirement), but also because it took alot of effort to get published and I am glad to have it over the finish line. I submitted this paper on Christmas Eve 2014 to get it in before the closing of the final, 'free of charge' window from the ISPRS open acess journal. It went through alot of reviews:

  1. 3 reviewers x 2 rounds (major revisions)
  2. 1 external editor
  3. Finally the internal editor
 But unfortunately the eventual decision was, 'reject and resubmit'. I did so, and then it went through 

     4. another 2 reviewers with (minor revisions)
     5. The internal editor

and I finally had it published last week. It's also my first appearance in a paper - that is my back in Figure 1a doing elevations for a flood survey and planning appeal in Skibbereen. The staff at the paper are very professional are very thorough, I think IJGI will be very popular. Will it overtake the print ISPRS journal?


Thursday 10 December 2015

Sciencists.

I was the lucky recipient of a spare iCrag ticket and got to attend SciCom:2015 yesterday in Athlone. It was aimed at enhancing science communication and making scientists more aware of the challenges they face in getting their message across and increasing their profile. It was a very enjoyable conference and certainly made a welcome change from the, 'death by powerpoint' formula of the academic conferences that I usually attend.




An excellent range of speakers and the keynote was extremely entertaining - Quentin Cooper from BBC's, 'The Forum'. Some excellent facts from his talk:

- Really we should be, 'Sciencists' to spell it correctly, but when coining the term, 'Scientist' in the early 1800's the term for the cluster of enthusiasts was modelled on the term for defining a broad range of, 'Artists' - and so the 'T' stuck.

- When dealing with barriers to improving people's perceptions of sciencists - the top 3 screen sciencists aren't even human. Spock was one of the them.



- Sciencists are statistically guaranteed to be the most likely character killed on television. Sciencists have a 10% chance of being killed. That is strange - as it was usually the guys in red who bought it in Star Trek - not Spock.



- We are also evil - as there is a 5% chance that the baddy in a movie will be a sciencist.

Some great talks, and easily the most stable Skype connection that I have ever seen for a webcast with Connie St. Louis.




Monday 7 December 2015

Sentinel 2a

Public access to early Sentinel 2a data was announced last week. Europe and Africa are being imaged every orbit during the ramp-up stage, with the rest of the world at a 30 day cycle. Here it is right now on an ascending pass in the Indian ocean. Also a neat little ESA app if anyone would like to track it in real-time or learn more about it.


Saturday 5 December 2015

Mount Etna

Here is a beautiful Landsat 8 RGB composite of Mount Etna smoking, 3rd December 2015. The full eruption happened later in the day and I suppose the cloud would have covered anyway. Unfortunately Landsat 8's thermal bands malfunctioned back in November so we can't get a thermal comparison from this image. There are also quite a few algal blooms around Sicily at present.



Just look at the colours in this image, what a beautiful planet.


Friday 4 December 2015

iCrag Launch

One of the new projects I will be working on is, "slick feature mapping" with iCrag which will involve locating, measuring and monitoring natural and man-made slick features. iCrag is one of the new SFI centres and represents a massive boost to the geoscience community. TimDaire and myself will all be involved for the next year + on this project. We were invited to the iCrag launch in UCD on wednesday - an excellent turn out. It was also good to meet some of the names I had heard mentioned over the preceeding months too. Looking forward to the project!





Tuesday 1 December 2015

FLEX

'FLEX' was a regular topic of conversation during the POLWET survey in the summer. This was one of the final candidates for ESA's 8th earth explorer mission and there were high hopes that it would be selected. FLEX is designed to measure fluorescence worldwide and therefore would obviously be of key interest to OPTIMISE. Fluorescence can give an idea of how well a plant is photosynthesising, so if you can successfully measure fluorescence then you can locate crops under stress almost immediately, rather than waiting for colour changes using the traditional NDVI route when in some cases the damage is already done.


FLEX's successful selection as the 8th earth explorer mission was announced some time ago but a recent post on ESA's LinkedIn page has some good info and images, such as the one I have used here.

Launch in 2022.

About Me

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My name is Conor. I am a Lecturer at the Department of Geography at Maynooth University. These few lines will (hopefully) chart my progress through academia and the world of research.