Trans-national SDI projects of the National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences

R. Vatseva, B. Koulov

National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography, BAS, Sofia, Bulgaria

The National Institute of Geophysics, Geodesy and Geography at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (NIGGG, BAS) carries out fundamental and applied research focused on security and quality of life, sustainable development, especially in the regional context, global changes and their impact on the natural and human environment. The Institute studies risk phenomena and processes of natural and anthropogenic origin in order to optimize the management of vulnerability of natural and socioeconomic systems. In recent years, Institute’s fellows have begun to study UV radiation and stratospheric ozone in Bulgaria and initiated air quality forecasting. Their studies assist the management of national, regional, and local demographic and settlement issues, economic specialization of municipalities and regions, tourism infrastructure and cross border cooperation. During 2010, researchers at the Institute participated in 11 EU funded projects, 3 NATO projects, and 3 COST program activities. Examples of the Institute's participation in several trans-national SDI projects are presented below.

The BalkanGEONet project seeks to identify and coordinate EO activities in the wider Balkan region and to pave the way for future full inclusion of all Balkan countries into the GEONet. The project’s results will be based on the best practices derived from studying successful and less‐successful approaches in the Balkan and other EU countries. Within the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) framework, the Project will enable and facilitate the active participation of the Balkan countries both in GMES and INSPIRE. The BalkanGEONet project brings together EO‐data providers and users, research, and governmental institutions, SMEs and international organizations, as well as a number of world leading experts in the field of EO. Analysis of the EO status in the region will support collaboration in future projects and encourage networking and partnership between research and end‐user communities. The Project aims at increasing Balkan EO capacity at all levels, including human, technical and institutional, while in parallel targeting both the national and international trainings, networking and coordination.

PASODOBLE project (Promote Air Quality Services integrating Observations – Development Of Basic Localised Information for Europe) aims to develop and demonstrate user-driven information services (MYAIR services) for the regional and local air quality sector by combining satellite based measurements and in-situ data from the GMES atmosphere core services. The PASODOBLE project must ensure that the MYAIR products and services reach the widest possible pool of end-users and emerging markets. In order to ensure that the MYAIR products and services are financially sustainable, potential clients are consulted throughout the development process. The potential clients are involved in developing specifications for the end products so that MYAIR is able to provide valuable and functional tools which meet the users’ needs. Currently several economic models for long-term operations of the services are being investigated.

Project “Modelling System for Emergency Response to the Release of Harmful Substances in the Atmosphere” aims to develop and deploy, on the SEEGRID-SCI infrastructure, a modeling system for emergency response to the release of harmful substances in the atmosphere, targeted at the SEE and more specifically Balkan region, which would be able to: i) Perform highly accurate and reliable risk analysis and assessment for selected “hot spots”; ii) Provide the national authorities and the international community with short-term regional scale forecast of the propagation of harmful gases; iii) Perform, in an off-line mode, a more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the possible longer-term impacts on the environment and human health in the Balkan region and make the results available to the authorities and the public. The application is using established models from the US EPA Models-3 air quality modeling system – WRF, CMAQ, SMOKE, plus some libraries and tools for transforming data into correct format, some of which are developed by the project team. All of these are installed at the environmental VO software area.

DACEA (Danube Cross-Border System for Earthquake Alert) is the application within “EU Programme for Cross-Border Cooperation”, which is using early warning system. Participating countries are Bulgaria and Romania. Early warning system is viewed as part of real-time information system that provides rapid information, about an earthquake impeding hazard, to the public and disaster relief organizations before (early warning) and after a strong earthquake (shake map). An early warning system evaluates earthquake magnitude in 4-5 seconds. It consists of several different parts: a dedicated acquisition system, algorithms to rapidly detect seismic events, algorithms that eliminate false detections and alarms and methods to estimate the earthquake magnitude and to send the warning to the users. All of these parts have to work automatically, in real time, without interruption for a long period of time.

Project “Change Detection of Land Use and Land Cover in Coastal Zones of China (Fujian) and Bulgaria Using Multitemporal and Multiscale Remote Sensing Data” aims to identify and map land use/land cover changes (LUCC) based on multi-temporal, multi-source and multi-scale remote sensing data. Computer aided and automated classification procedures for LUCC identification were applied for selected regions of the prefecture of Fujian of China and Bulgaria using high and very high resolution satellite imagery for 30-years period.

Project “Investigation of multitemporal and multisensor satellite imagery for enhanced CORINE Land Cover classes recognition and mapping (case studies in Slovakia and Bulgaria)” aims to identify, analyze and assess landscape changes in selected territories in Bulgaria and Slovakia for the period 2000-2006 using unified methodological procedure in order to receive comparable results. Enhanced land use/cover classes were developed for satellite image mapping based on SPOT4, SPOT5 and IRS-P6 data.