Slick Mapping

As we streamline the process and begin to target the right parameters for the different environmental conditions, we are starting to pick slicks out. From an assembly of three S1a slices covering most of Irish waters out to the Porcupine bank - a nice? slick appeared in the imagery from early August. The southern dark spot in this image is most likely a wind slick or waters converging - but the long, linear feature in the north is definitely something on the water surface. There is a bright spot about 2km to the east of the slick - possibly a ship after blowing its tanks. We will compare this now with all of the ancillary data we have for geology, weather, petroleum, shipping and try and classify it. Serious processing times - one setting I tested recently ran for 15 days on the server.

Update - having checked this with ancillary data - it is quite near a well. I will also check Sentinel 2a and Landsat 8 next to see if there was a cloud-free overpass coinciding with the slick for a different view.

Update 2: Nope, cloud.

IEOS10

IEOS10 coming up, looking forward to it. Hosted by UCC at the NMCI this year.

ERC Starting Grant 2017

Finally putting this ERC Grant Writing class to good use. I have two papers sans supervisor, five journal papers, the novel methodology, the two years post PhD and have been working hard to improve my CV since the previous post. Lots of out-of-hours work ahead aiming for the early review September deadline and the final October deadline.

Lay on McDuff.

Crowd Sourcing Atmospheric Corrections

An interesting idea being tested out by Digital Globe - crowd sourcing image corrections. They are testing new correction algorithms and want feedback on how they are performing. For something that should be so boring it was actually quite addictive - had to drag myself away from it after 10 or so images.

It will be alright on the night

Despite the misty rain, strong winds and low lying cloud in Longford, the cloud in between there and Dublin and the confirmed cloud over Maynooth University (only about 20km from the coast) the flight went ahead due to some promising reports from the crew in Dublin bay. We emerged from the cloud at around 13:30 to glorious sunshine at Dublin City - here is a pic taken by us as we were in a holding pattern over Poolbeg towers waiting for Dublin ATC to route us in for the flight lines. We recorded RGB, Thermal, Multispec and Hyperspec imagery in 3 flight lines (that is all ATC would allow us). The boat crew from DCU were out in the bay since 8am so the aerial survey and the boat survey coincided perfectly.

The satellite portion of the survey was less fortunate - unsurprisingly so as this is Ireland. Although you can see from this image that there were some breaks in the cloud all over Leinster - the satellite overpass coincided with a block of cloud sitting over Dublin.