Angela Errico

Detection of environmental hazards through the feature-based fusion of optical and SAR data: a case study in southern Italy

The use of remote-sensing images is becoming common practice in the fight against environmental crimes. However, the challenge of exploiting the complementary information provided by radar and optical data, and by more conventional sources encoded in geographic information systems, is still open. In this work, we propose a new workflow for the detection of potentially hazardous cattle-breeding facilities, exploiting both synthetic aperture radar and optical multitemporal data together with geospatial analyses in the geographic information system environment. The data fusion is performed at a feature-based level. Experiments on data available for the area of Caserta, in southern Italy, show that the proposed technique provides very high detection capability, up to 95%, with a very low false alarm rate. A fast and easy-to-use system has been realized based on this approach, which is a useful tool in the hand of agencies engaged in the protection of territory.

IDES Project: A New Effective Tool for Safety and Security in the Environment

In the region of Campania in south-west Italy there is growing evidence, including a World Health Organization (WHO) study of the region, that the accumulation of waste, illegal and legal, urban and industrial, has contaminated soil, water, and the air with a range of toxic pollutants including dioxins. An effective environmental monitoring system represents an important tool for an early detection of the environmental violations. The IDES Project is a Geo-environmental Intelligence System developed by the CIRA with the contribution of universities and other government bodies and it aims at implementing an advanced software and hardware platform for image, data and document analysis in order to support law enforcement investigations. The IDES main modules are: Imagery Analysis Module to monitor land-use and anthropogenic changes; Environmental GIS Module to fuse geographical and administrative information; Epidemiological domain Module; Semantic Search Module to discover information in public sources like: Blog, Social Network, Forum, Newspapers; This paper focuses on Semantic Search Module and aims to provide the greatest support to the extraction of possible environmental crimes collecting and analyzing documents from online public sources. Unlikely people denounce criminal activity to the authorities. On the other hand many people through blogs, forums and social networks every day expose the status of land degradation. In addition, journalists often, have given the interest of the public, documenting the critical environmental issues. All this unstructured information are often lost due to the difficulty to collect and analyse. The IDES Semantic Search Module is an innovative solution for aggregating of the common uneasiness and thoughts of the people able to transform and objectify the public opinion in human sensors for safety environmental monitoring. In this paper we introduce methods and technologies used in some case studies and, finally, we report some representatives results, highlighting innovative aspects of this applied research.

SAR/multispectral image fusion for the detection of environmental hazards with a GIS

In this paper we propose a GIS-based methodology, using optical and SAR remote sensing data, together with more conventional sources, for the detection of small cattle breeding areas, potentially responsible of hazardous littering. This specific environmental problem is very relevant for the Caserta area, in southern Italy, where many small buffalo breeding farms exist which are not even known to the productive activity register, and are not easily monitored and surveyed. Experiments on a test area, with available specific ground truth, prove that the proposed systems is characterized by very large detection probability and negligible false alarm rate.

Study on Continuous Descent Operation for Efficient Air Transport System

The effects of aircraft noise, fuel use and related pollutant atmospheric emissions can impact the quality of life in populated areas near to airports and represent environmental issues resulting in restrictions for air traffic procedures, aircraft manufacturing and airport facilities design. In order to mitigate the above-indicated environmental issues, specifically designed Curved and Continuous Descent Approach trajectories can be adopted for the implementation during approach and landing phases. This paper provides a study about Curved and Continuous Descent Approach concept for the future efficient flight operations in TMA. It aims providing the main concepts and mathematical models needed to implement a system able to generate descent profiles that are suitably optimized in terms of fuel consumption. These concepts and models are the basis for the development of dedicated tools and algorithms able to real-time generate optimal descent profiles, in the framework of a more efficient Air Transport System management with reduced environmental impact. In particular, this study investigates the differences between conventional descent and proposed curved and continuous descent techniques, starting from the analysis of procedures for a generic descent trajectory. Furthermore, detailed mathematical modelling of fuel consumption with reference to the descent phase is reported in the paper and, finally, highlevel requirements and performance assessment indicators for Continuous Descent and Curved Approach profiles are discussed. The overall study here proposed, therefore, aims providing the basis for the development of automatic Continuous Descent and Curved Approach profiles real-time generation tools, able to take into account route structures and system operations, in compliance with the current rules of the air and integrating future ATM concepts and technologies.

Performance-based navigation (PBN) with continuous descent operations (CDO) for efficient approach over highly protected zones

This paper aims to demonstrate the benefits of combining the PBN concept with the CDA implementation by proposing an innovative system for the automatic generation of Curved and Continuous Descent Approach (CCDA) trajectories. These trajectories reduce aircraft fuel consumption and noise impact near to airport. Furthermore, the path curvature property preserves the dispersion of tracks with respect to the conventional ground-based step-down arrival path in both lateral and vertical profiles. The proposed system implements the procedure described in the following. First, specific paths are elaborated, with calculated top of descent point according to predefined angle or with initial fixed altitude up to intercept the descend glide path at constant or variable angle. This elaboration integrates obstacles geo-referenced mapping to avoid potential conflicts with airport/external environmental constraints by automatically generating corrective maneuvers. Then, the BADA aircraft performance parameters are elaborated in order to compute the fuel consumption associated to each calculated descent path. Finally, the CCDA path that minimizes the fuel consumption is selected. The system performances are evaluated in terms of fuel efficiency, noise impact, and lateral and vertical protected areas for tracking tolerance.

An Analytical Approach for Optimal Resilience Management in Future ATM Systems

The air transportation system is a large-scale socio-technical system and its modelling approaches emphasize the sociological dimension due to the increasing importance of collaborative decision-making processes in the future Air Traffic Management (ATM). Resilience is assuming an increasing importance within ATM, but it is difficult or even impossible to establish the resilience role in realizing the targeted performance levels of an air traffic system. This paper proposes a systematic methodology for resilience management in ATM. It introduces an analytical definition of a resilience metric for an ATM system and formally states the resilience management problem as an optimization problem. Moreover, it describes a strategy for the problem solution and provides some preliminary results in order to quantitatively prove the validity of the methodology.

Simulation Approach to the Resilience Engineering Assessment of the ATM System in Crisis Scenarios

THE increase of traffic density and typology of airspace users and aircraft operations increases the complexity of the current Air Traffic Management system and of its performance, and may lead to significant performance reductions in the presence of unexpected events. After the occurrence of an unexpected event, the analysis of Key Performance Area, such as capacity, efficiency, etc., and shortfalls in their related Key Performance Indicators at local, regional or network wide levels were made selecting the alternative scenarios and comparing them to the planned situation with normal operations. This relies on the working relationship and processes between air transportation network managers and operational Stakeholders especially during the anticipating, reacting and management phases strongly depending on their reactions to mitigate the impact on the system, and to optimize resilience in sector groups based upon the current Air Traffic Management activities. This paper describes an approach to resilience analysis in crisis scenarios, starting from the concept of Resilience Engineering and related metrics in Air Traffic Management system adopted in SESAR WPE2.21 SAFECORAM (Sharing of Authority in Failure/Emergency Condition for Resilience of Air traffic Management) project.

Modeling Approach for Resilience Engineering of the Future ATM System

The Air Traffic Management system is rapidly growing in complexity. In order to limit potential performance reductions of the system, several international research programs were started to develop new operational concepts in order to reorganize and redesign the air traffic management system in a more efficient way. An evaluation of the performance of these new operational concepts may be stated in terms of system resilience. Resilience is an approach to the analysis of the capabilities and the behavior of complex systems under nonnominal conditions. The purpose of this paper is to present the approach proposed in the SESAR JU E2.21 SAFECORAM project for the definition of a quantitative methodology for resilience evaluation of the future ATM system based on the development of a concept for task re-allocation among remaining available resources (humans and/or machines) in offnominal conditions.