The main objectives of SAO as an internal project is to consolidate and support the activities carried out in the context of the Institute for Earth Observation in order to gather all the algorithms, products and services for monitoring the alpine environment with satellite data under the same framework. This will allow the establishment of a consistent alpine monitoring system for supporting the proactive management of the resources present in the Alps and coping with some of the main challenges that affect such a sensitive and vulnerable ecosystem.

To this end the SAO project is set in a context with the Environmental Sensing Lab that will be established in the NOI Techpark of Bolzano, where the development of services based on research will take place, channeled through the Data Management and Processing Science project, where research will be rendered pre-operational.

A special attention will be devoted to the dissemination of the knowledge produced during the project. Results will be published using both non-purely scientific communication tools such as Blog, Website Facebook/Twitter accounts and scientific channels such as peer reviewed publications and presentation to conferences.

With this, SAO aims at demonstrating the abilities of our Institute to: 1) use remote sensing as a tool to monitor alpine ecosystems dynamics; and 2) deal with the new era of high temporal and high-resolution data. These are base requirements to lead future research projects in the field of Earth Observation.

Contact Persons: Claudia Notarnicola, Alexander Jacob

claudia.notarnicola@eurac.edu; alexander.jacob@eurac.edu