As urban areas expand, the focus on improving outdoor thermal comfort intensifies. This study generated Summer Discomfort Index (SDI) maps for Seville and Barcelona (Spain), as well as Tetuan (Morocco). SDI integrates temperature and humidity for an accurate comfort assessment. Calculations involved substituting air temperature with land surface data from MODIS and incorporating humidity from weather stations, then comparing it to Thermal Sensation Votes (TSV) gathered through surveys. The objective was to assess thermal comfort levels and explore the relationship between remotely sensed SDI and residents' reported perception. These detailed SDI maps offer crucial insights into summer thermal conditions, advancing urban climate studies and influencing urban planning, design, and well-being strategies.
The Hapke model has been widely used in the field of soil remote sensing. However, the latest development of the Hapke model (i.e., Hapke-HSR model) adopted a simple hypothesis to consider the influence of the soil moisture content (SMC), which brought great difficulties to SMC parameter inversion. This paper presents a method to improve the Hapke model using the improved multilayer radiative transfer model of soil reflectance (MARMIT-2), which can effectively improve the ability of the Hapke-HSR model to characterize the variation in the SMC. Finally, we used the soil database to comprehensively verify the ability of the improved Hapke model. The results show that the improved Hapke can effectively characterize the spectral characteristics of soil and show a higher fitting accuracy (RMSE = 0.009) compared with the Hapke-HSR model (RMSE = 0.031), especially at a high SMC (≥30%). Therefore, the improved Hapke model can better understand soil physical properties and improve the inversion accuracy of soil–vegetation physical parameters, which can be used to enhance agricultural water use efficiency.
Air pollution control and air quality monitoring are global priority, which also applies to local scales. Ground-based monitoring stations provide high quality values, but their number and cost make them insufficient for use at certain scales and for air monitoring in urban areas. Satellite imagery provides indicators directly related to air quality. Aerosol optical thickness (AOD), used in atmospheric corrections of images, can be used as an indicator of air quality. This product is present in images obtained by satellites of medium spatial resolution, so it is necessary to develop methodologies to obtain it at higher resolution. This work aims to compare methodologies for obtaining AOD and its use in high spatial resolution satellites.
Recently, the Italian government has announced IRIDE, a new Earth observation program. IRIDE will likely be completed by 2026 under the management of the European Space Agency (ESA) and with the support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). IRIDE is an end-to-end system made up of a set of sub-constellations (with radar and optical sensors) and services intended for the Italian Public Administration. The aims of this work are twofold: firstly, to disseminate information within the scientific community regarding the IRIDE program by highlighting key constellation characteristics as outlined in the latest ASI technical communications; secondly, to put forth valuable recommendations for the global applicability of this data, adopting a bottom-up perspective.
This study analyzes repercussions for the morphology, talweg, riverbanks and surrounding structures of several aquatic systems transformed by multipurpose reservoirs located within the Ecuadorian territory of South America. For this purpose, several geomatics techniques were used simultaneously, minimizing the temporal error in the reservoir water level in order to measure the impact of partial or total emptying operations on these reservoirs. High precision geodetic networks were designed to synchronously use geospatial data-capturing equipment, namely UASs/drones with INS/GNSS systems, LiDAR sensors, RGB optical sensors, USVs/aquatic drones equipped with GNSS systems, and single-beam sensors. Photogrammetric, LiDAR and underwater results were contrasted with topographic techniques used in the monitoring and control of structures. Environmental changes in the surroundings, soil movements due to sedimentary and erosive effects, and possible displacements in existing structures were analyzed.
