FLOREO

Satellite photography for monitoring environment

Project duration: 2008 to 2010

The project was oriented on development and implementation of relevant Earth Observation-based services in the Czech Republic to support existing hydrological monitoring activities, especially snow melt and surface water runoff contributing to flooding events. Czech Republic has experienced different types of floods in recent years. Wide range of possible types of floods brings also wide and complex demand on the input data and hydrological methods and models that are used. Synergy of the Earth Observation and in-situ synoptic monitoring proves to be an inevitable demand in the hydrological prognosis. There are 80 automatic meteorological stations together with Terra MODIS and Envisat MERIS/ASAR satellites used to monitor 78 000 km2 of the Czech Republic. The satellites provide more than 3 million of observation points per the area of interest on daily basis. This clearly proves the usage of Earth Observation for such tasks.

The FLOREO system implementation was thoroughly discussed and utilized with hydrology experts from the Czech Hydrometerological Institute. It is the user, that is the main national organization mandated in monitoring and prevention of flood threat. Gisat team was responsible for overall FLOREO concept, Earth Observation processing and models preparation, while Sprinx Systems managed administratively project and provided technological implementation of the computation and delivered mapserver to communicate the results. Faculty of Science contributed to FLOREO by scientific validation of methodological aspects.

Sprinx Systems

Sprinx Systems is one of the leading Czech technology companies – established in 1996. Three divisions focus on development, distribution and implementation of business systems and portals completely based on modern Internet/intranet technologies, security and infrastructure consulting and building special high performance computers.

Gisat

Gisat is a geoinformation service company providing value added services based on the Earth Observation technology. The service portfolio extends from satellite data and geomatics software distribution, through specialized image & GIS data processing and analysis, up to advanced geoinformation products and services. The company is ISO 9001 & ISO 1400 certified to guarantee the quality of provided services and to reflect the responsibility in environmental impacts of our activities.

Department of Applied Geoinformatics and Cartography, Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague

The Department’s activities are closely linked with other Natural Science departments and it cooperates with external research institutions through a variety of joint projects. Interdisciplinary research and cooperation represent source of competitive advantage of this institution. Department members are active in research projects at the national and international levels and participate in scientific symposia and conferences.

What would you name as main benefits of the project to your team?

Answer provided by project team: “The FLOREO project brought our team a lot of experience, especially from area of ESA projects procedural features. The project considerably helped to get to the ESA Earth Observation expert community. Another important benefit of the project was validation of complex concept of operational monitoring and modeling of landscape status and evolution thanks to Earth Observation and ground measurements. Also technology of on-line internet results visualization was successfully tested.”