Artificial intelligence and Earth observation towards disaster risk reduction: the AI-OBSERVER’s research exploratory project

Abstract

The AI-OBSERVER project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ACCESS-03 (Twinning) under the Grant Agreement No. 101079468. The project started in October 2022 and has a duration of 36 months. The ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Earth Observation, Space Technology and Geoinformation is the project coordinator, and the consortium also consists of two internationally leading research institutions, the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) from Germany and the University of Rome Tor Vergata (UNITOV) from Italy, and an industrial partner CELLOCK Ltd from Cyprus. With AI-OBSERVER project being currently in its last year, the efforts of ERATOSTHENES CoE are focused on the development of six risk assessment models for multi-hazard monitoring and assessment in Cyprus on i) Earthquakes, (ii) Landslides, (iii) Coastal erosion, (iv) Forest fires, (v) Floods and (vi) Marine Pollution. These are being developed by applying the enhanced skills and scientific background ERATOSTHENES CoE’s researchers acquired on the application of advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based techniques on Earth Observation (EO) and geospatial datasets, via the various capacity building activities carried out during the 3 years of the project by the advanced partners, i.e., the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) from Germany, and the University of Rome Tor Vergata (UNITOV) from Italy. The overall methodology for these six models and some initial results are presented in this study.