Giuseppe Mussumeci

A GIS application for UAV flight planning

Abstract The flight planning for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is extremely useful both in terms of planimetry and altimetry. Regarding the planimetry, it is needed to reach and operate on the region of interest, while for the altimetry, it is functional to plan the flight altitude as function of the obstacles along the navigation path. In this paper we propose an innovative approach for the construction of a georeferenced map of the obstacles based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies. In this way the path planning for the UAV navigation can be accurately managed by defining precise flight plans on a cartographic support where the obstacles are represented in a three-dimensional way. The employment of free and open source software only, makes the approach widely usable and customizable.

GIS Procedure to Forecast and Manage Woodland Fires

Over the last few years, the phenomenon of woodland fires has become ever more widespread, this is also due to changes in climatic conditions; unfortunately, experience has shown that the consequences for the environment and human life are very serious if the extinguishing operations are not timely. Starting from a brief analysis of the most important available models to simulate fire evolution, the aim of this work was to propose a dynamic prototypal GIS to support the forecast of woodland fire spread and the management of the available resources for extinguishing operations. Currently GIS technology offers many tools for the implementation of analytical models that are useful to evaluate the temporal and spatial evolution of natural phenomena. Specific functionalities for network and lifeline management are also available that make it possible to create a decisional support system (DSS) to obtain the real-time optimization of resource allocation.

GIS Techniques in the Evaluation of Pipeline Networks Seismic Hazard

To evaluate seismic risk, it must be taken into account that modern towns depend daily on lifelines and utility systems, that become essential after natural disasters, but are often without any earthquake threat. To evaluate lifeline networks seismic vulnerability, we usually refer to damage models, requiring parameters dealing with pipe features, soil behavior, and seismic hazard of the studied area (peak ground acceleration or velocity, PGA, PGV, or permanent ground displacement, PGD). In this work, models evaluating seismic hazard in a studied area and expected seismic damage for pipeline networks will be applied. A model is shown to assess earthquake induced slope displacements. Some attenuation laws will be selected to evaluate PGA, PGV and PGD. Finally, Repair Rate will be calculated for pipes of an important Italian water network feeding 20 towns of Etnean area, referring to three seismic scenario events. Applications will be developed in a GIS environment.

Lifeline Seismic Hazards: A GIS Application

In every urbanized area, lifelines and essential facilities play a very important role and they become essential after natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, landslides and so on. The purpose of this research is to develop a working tool to assess lifeline seismic risk, overlaying information about the studied area’s seismic hazard (referring to a seismic scenario) and lifelines that could expect damage. In damage models parameters are required, some representing pipes, others representing the soil behaviour and finally, at the very least a synthetic parameter representing the seismic hazard of the studied area (PGA, PGV or PGD). The evaluation of the network intrinsic vulnerability will be done in terms of a synthetic parameter called the Repair Rate. PGDs will be evaluated referring to attenuation laws and to earthquake induced slope displacements according to the Newmark approach. An application of the proposed model, developed by GIS techniques, will be applied to the case of a Sicily (Italy) important water network.

Road network modeling in open source GIS to manage the navigation of autonomous robots

The autonomous navigation of a robot can be accomplished through the assignment of a sequence of waypoints previously identified in the territory to be explored. In general, the starting point is a vector graph of the network consisting of possible paths. The vector graph can be directly available in the case of actual road networks, or it can be modeled, i.e. on the basis of cartographic supports or, even better, of a digital terrain model (DTM). In this paper we present software procedures developed in Grass-GIS, PostGIS and QGIS environments to identify, model, and visualize a road graph and to extract and normalize sequence of waypoints which can be transferred to a robot for its autonomous navigation.

A Low Cost Methodology for Multispectral Image Classification

Multispectral and hyperspectral remote sensing have significantly improved territorial surveys and mapping. However aerial images are often expensive being acquired through aircraft and satellite sensors. Furthermore, the processing and classification of these images need commercial software that increases the entire cost of the analysis. For these reasons, we propose an approach of data acquisition and analysis based on supervised classification to obtain accurately maps of the area of interest in reduced time. The images have been acquired through 3-channels Tetracam ADC-Lite camera, and processed with free and open source software, PixelWrench2 and QGIS. The results obtained demonstrate that the approach can compete with traditional acquisition and classification methods, due to simple operational procedures, low operational costs, and high accuracy of supervised classification. This approach provides promising results that encourage its development and optimization of these technologies for other purposes, such as the mapping of asbestos-cement (AC) roof coverings.

Optimization of a measuring set-up for the kinematics detection of electromagnetic fields

Large band instruments and GPS-GIS (global position system-geographic information systems) systems installed on a vehicle in motion are used to measure the electromagnetic field (EMF) present at the ground in a kinematics way. This procedure allows to constantly monitor a wide part of the territory very quickly and cutting the prices. Using a vehicle in motion equipped with a GPS-GIS system synchronized with an electric field probe, it is possible to measure continuously at the same time the position of the probe and the correspondent EMF value. However, many factors as vehicle presence, probe position and field frequency affect the results. To measure high frequency EMF, we suggest to use a metallic shield with known geometric and dielectric properties. This new set-up can be easily simulated and reproduced in laboratory. Comparing laboratory measurements and theoretical calculations, it is possible to determine the suitable measurements conditions.