Latitudo 40: Flood detection
Last updated10 December 2021
Description
Our Company
Latitudo 40 is a startup dedicated to using earth observation data to monitor the environmental
sustainability of cities, assessing the quality of life in neighbourhoods in the same city or in
different cities, simulating the effect of interventions planned by urban planners on thermal
comfort and carbon absorption, with the aim of offering a useful tool for improving the places
that will be home to a large part of the world's population in the near future.
Petabytes of satellite imagery have become accessible at increasing resolution and lower cost,
but despite these enormous technological advances, only a marginal part of the information
contained in these images is used to support urban monitoring and prevention activities. The
technology is still complex to use and requires specific domain knowledge and initial
investment to become familiar with the technology. We want to give access to all these
information in the fastest and easiest way, without any specific technical knowledge on remote
sensing.
The challenge
Latitudo 40 aims to create a prototype solution for flood detection and depth estimation in
complex urban environment using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite images eventually
integrated with heterogeneous sources (e.g. crowdsourced data). SAR sensors constitute a
powerful tool for environmental monitoring due to their all weather and all-time imaging
capabilities. These characteristics are crucial especially in case of natural disasters when a
quick response is fundamental to minimize economic and human lives losses. In this sense,
urban environments are critical, and the implementation of tools that use fast analysis
methodologies for event assessment and recovery is a key to minimize flooding events impact.
Starting from a market analysis for this kind of solutions and from a methodological state of
the art analysis, the objectives of this project are to create an application prototype that will be
then re-engineered and integrated in our products, to evaluate its market potential up to a
definition of the most suitable revenue model and to define the right communication strategy
before and after the launch of such a tool on the market (with a focus on the European area).
Students profile
Under a technical point of view Aerospace/Electronics/Telecommunication Engineering or
Computer Science students with a basic knowledge of Python programming language.
Experience with microwave remote sensing and machine learning algorithms will be
considered as an advantage.
English language speaking.
Benefits
Promote teamwork and communication skills
International networking
traveling
Host
ISEP
City
Porto (PORTUGAL)