The Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) is a Research and Technology Organization (RTO) active in the fields of materials, environment and IT, under the trusteeship of the country’s Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
It works across the entire innovation chain: fundamental and applied research, incubation, transfer of technologies. By transforming scientific knowledge into technologies, smart data and tools, LIST empowers citizens in their choices, public authorities in their decisions and businesses in their strategies.
¶ Related expertise
LIST’s research unit Environmental Sensing and Modelling, which is engaged with this proposal, carries out impact-driven research, geared towards monitoring, forecasting and predicting environmental systems in a changing world. Its research and development activities are centered on the combination and exploitation of remote sensing information obtained by multiple and complementary sensors installed on spaceborne and airborne platforms.
The assimilation of remote sensing data with numerical prediction models enables the generation of higher-level information ranging from local or regional to global scales, with unprecedented accuracy and spatio-temporal resolution. This strategy is used to develop innovative applications in precision agriculture, natural resources management, disaster risk reduction and maritime surveillance.
The development of scientific algorithms enabling the systematic, automated and rapid production of flood extent maps from various satellite Earth Observation data sets counts among the unit’s primary research objectives. Moreover, the scientists at LIST are renowned for their research leading towards a more efficient assimilation of various EO-derived data sets into hydrologic and hydraulic models, as well as a more comprehensive assessment of flood hazard and risk at large scale through a combination of numerical modelling and remote sensing. Its EO relevant expertise in both fields is demonstrated by a track record of scientific publications and research projects.
¶ Related experience
Over the last decade the unit’s collective knowhow and its technological assets have been applied to develop new products and services supporting flooding-related disaster risk reduction at large scale.
Some examples of such applications are provided in the following:
- ESHAPE (EuroGEO Showcases: Applications Powered by Europe), 2019-2023, European Commission – H2020: LIST is leading the project’s flood pilot (as part of the water resources showcase) and is generating a Sentinel-1 and ENVISAT-based record of floods over Europe for the time period 2002 – 2019.
- EDRIFT (Satellite EO based solutions to support disaster risk financing in South East Asia), 2018-2020, European Space Agency: The project aims to setup and maintain a fully automated Sentinel-1 based flood mapping processor to systematically monitor water bodies in 3 countries of SE Asia during every year’s Monsoon season.
- SEADRIF (Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility), 2018-2020, World Bank: The project aims to automatically generate flood extent maps and to estimate the number of persons affected by flood events in order to support the parametric insurance models of the disaster risk financing industry.
- LANDCOVER CCI (Global land cover map development for climate modeling applications), 2013-2015, European Space Agency: The LIST was in charge of the quality control and large-scale validation of the permanent water bodies layer derived from the collection of ENVISAT ASAR recordings.
- HTEP (Hydrology Thematic Exploitation Platform), 2013-2015, European Space Agency: Implementation of an ‘on demand’ Sentinel-1 based flood mapping application on the HTEP platform and development of a water extent monitoring system for large lakes in Africa.
Other relevant projects in recent years include HYDRAS+ (Improving drought management by assimilating multi source satellite data into hydrologic models), HASARD (Implementation of new methods for remote sensing-based flood hazard mapping on the ESA’s Grid Processing on Demand environment, and WATCHFUL (Water Cycle Feasibility: characterizing the water cycle at global and basin scales using EO data).
More info on LIST official website
