FAST4MAP Project

Fast & Advanced SAR Techniques for Monitoring & Alerting Processes

FAST4MAP is a project co-funded by ASI, whose goal is to improve the speed and accuracy of E.O. data processing, leveraging the GPU’s processing capabilities. One of the first demonstration applications was the creation of a dedicated landslide and flood monitoring service, based on SAR data (Sentinel 1A/B, COSMO-SkyMed, COSMO-SkyMed 2a Gen.).

Landslide and flood monitoring service

The service uses mainly Sentinel 1A/B products for continuous monitoring of areas at high risk of landslides or flooding, using COSMO-SkyMed (CSK) data (and simulated COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) data or real if available) at higher resolution for event based analysis (danger situation or alert prediction) by accessing the modality of planning and acquisition in emergency situations as provided for CSK mission.

This service is based on capability to measure displacement from SAR interferometric data. In particular, the techniques Multi-Temporal InSAR (MTI) allow to accurately measure millimetric soil displacements in correspondence of those targets on the ground (PS – Persistent Scatters and DS – Distributed Scatters) that have a high temporal coherence radar.

The processing chain provides integration between PS and DS techniques (integration of Spinua-PS and DARIS-DS techniques) and exploits mainly Interferometric Wide Swath data provided by Sentinel 1 mission and Stripmap, Spotlight data provided by Cosmo-SkyMed. The MTI techniques are based on complex algorithms, whose configuration and execution are typically offloaded to expert operators, who can recognize and also manage abnormal situations due to particular noise conditions or in the presence of artefacts.

In case of FAST4MAP, the processing chain SPINUA-DARIS is fully automatic. Moreover, to speed up the processing, very heavy from the computational point of view, some processing algorithms exploit massive parallelism of GPU; therefore some code running on standard HW architecture CPU based, is re-written by kernels running on GPUs and considering a hybrid architecture host-device. This allows a compact architecture that can be easily moved in proximity of the data and with a best speed ratio than more traditional computing server.

In the framework of ASI “Quarto bando tematico: Navigazione e osservazione della Terra”. Prime contractor: PlanetekItalia srl; Partner: GAP srl.

For more information: Slides (in italian)