Natural disasters can happen anywhere causing damage to land and infrastructure. When these disasters occur in remote areas without much human traffic, it may take a long time for someone to notice that an event has occurred and to respond to it. Response time and damages could be reduced if the area could be remotely monitored. Many satellites pass over the Earth everyday collecting valuable imagery data that is free to access. However, this data can be difficult to process and use in practical applications such as monitoring an area for changes. Existing programs that use satellite imagery to monitor areas for changes can cost a significant amount of money making it inaccessible to most people. In this paper, a software program is introduced to automatically retrieve, process, and analyze free satellite imagery data and notify the user of significant changes in their area of interest (AOI).
First, a software program was developed to automatically download a package of satellite imagery data from Planet Labs that met certain requirements for AOI, date, and cloud cover. A second software program was developed to download this data from the Google Cloud Storage (GCS) space and compare a current image to the composite of previous images in order to detect a change. This program then creates a figure to display the current image, the previous image, the difference area, and a summary table of the difference metrics. This figure is saved and emailed to the user if the differences are greater than the set threshold.
This program is also capable of running automatically in the background of a computer every time it is logged in. The success of the program in correctly identifying areas of change was tested in three locations using historical satellite image data. The software was successful in identifying areas of change and delivering this information to the user in an easy to understand summary figure. Overall, the software was able to utilize free satellite imagery to detect changes in disaster areas and deliver a summary report to a user to take action showing that this software could be used in the future as an easy way to monitor disaster areas. / Master of Science / Natural disasters have been increasing in severity in recent years causing damage to land and infrastructure. Response time to these events may be negatively impacted in areas that are difficult to access, but if these areas could be remotely monitored the impact of the events could be reduced. Satellites pass over the Earth each day collecting valuable imagery data; however, this information can be difficult to interpret and use in a practical applications. In this paper a software program is introduced to automatically collect and analyze satellite imagery data over a specified area. This analysis compares the current image to previous images to detect changes in the area. Once the comparison is complete a summary report is generated and delivered to the user. This program can also be set to run automatically in the background of the user's computer. The software was successful in identifying areas of change and delivering the information to the user showing that this software could be used in the future as an easy way to monitor disaster areas.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/120637 |
| Date | 11 June 2024 |
| Creators | Roush, Allison Granfield |
| Contributors | Mechanical Engineering, Kochersberger, Kevin Bruce, Abbott, Amos L., Mueller, Rolf |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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