Natural hazards

European Ground Motion Service

  • EGMS provides consistent and reliable information regarding natural and anthropogenic ground motion over the Copernicus Participating States and across national borders, with millimetre accuracy.
  • Application:
    • It provides an unprecedented opportunity to study geohazards and human-induced deformation such as slow-moving landslides, subsidence due to groundwater exploitation or underground mining, volcanic unrests and many more. It provides three level of products. The basic one, consisting of lines of sight velocity maps in ascending and descending orbits with annotated geolocalisation and quality measures per measurement point. The calibrated one, which consists of the same data but referenced to a model derived from global navigation satellite systems time-series data. And finally ortho one, which are components of motion (horizontal and vertical) anchored to the reference geodetic model.

EFFIS – Active Fire Detection

  • EFFIS uses the active fire detection provided by the NASA FIRMS (Fire Information for Resource Management System). Active fires are located on the basis of the so-called thermal anomalies produced by them. The algorithms compare the temperature of a potential fire with the temperature of the land cover around it; if the difference in temperature is above a given threshold, the potential fire is confirmed as an active fire or “hot spot.” 
  • Application:
    • As stated by its name, fire detection is the principal application of these data. However, this is very helpful as this can be used for hazard planning, population evacuation and several other early preparation measures instead of suffering harsher consequences later.

AlpArray

  • AlpArray is is an European initiative to advance our understanding of orogenesis and its relationship to mantle dynamics, plate reorganisations, surface processes and seismic hazard in the Alps-Apennines-Carpathians-Dinarides orogenic system. The initiative integrates present-day Earth observables with high-resolution geophysical imaging of 3D structure and physical properties
  • Application:
    1. Seismic activities monitoring
    2. Seismic hazard planning and prevention
    3. Surface processes monitoring
    4. Orogenic system understanding
    5. Advanced mantle dynamic understanding