SOFTWARE that can recognise rapidly changing events on the Earth’s surface from space is set to warn of flash floods, volcanic eruptions and oil spills far more quickly than has been possible until now.
It can take weeks to spot new features in the deluge of data beamed back to Earth from remote-sensing spacecraft. For instance, Europe’s premier Earth observation satellite, Envisat, generates 140 gigabytes of image data each day. Analysing the images to find new features such as flash floods can take weeks or even months. But that is set to change.
A team of hydrologists led by Felipe…
