BEAT IT!
Short Description
Starting point / motivation
Severe summer droughts in Central Europe have led to record levels of bark beetle damaged in 2018 and 2019 and bark beetle outbreaks are feared to continue at catastrophic level. In order to better manage bark beetle crises there is an urgent need for rapid spatial information on bark beetle occurrences and for models that highlight risk areas and predict new outbreaks.
Contents and goals
BEAT IT! will develop and test innovative methods for early detection and spatial analysis of bark beetle infestation by EO based monitoring of forests with Copernicus Sentinel and Planet imagery.
Research will focus on early detection of bark beetle infestation using time series analysis (Kalman filter) and machine learning classifiers, advancements in artificial intelligence will be used to improve the risk assessment.
Expected results
A prototype of a near real-time bark beetle monitoring system will be set up in a cloud computing environment and resulting map products will be validated in situ together with users from forest administration, forest companies and service providers.
Project Partners
Coordinator
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Project partner
- UMWELTDATA Gesellschaft m.b.H.
- Cloudflight Austria GmbH
- Johannes Seilern-Aspang
Contact Address
JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH
Leonhardstraße 59
A-8010 Graz
Web: www.joanneum.at