CLOSE-SEARCH

The CLOSE-SEARCH project has been recently focusing in disseminating the project concept and results along the many fields that the project targets at: SAR, UAVs, navigation...

Firstly, the project CLOSE-SEARCH was presented on May, 4th 2011 at the GeoInformation for Disaster Management (www.gi4dm2011.org), sponsored by the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). Anticipating the obvious and growing importance of geoinformation for disaster and risk management a separate group of researchers, professionals and vendors have begun a worldwide discussion on collection, management, analysis, sharing and visualization of geo-information. The Gi4DM is coordinated by the ISPRS Ad hoc Committee on Risk and Disaster Management, Working Group 1 (Disaster) of the ISPRS Commission VIII (Remote Sensing and Policies) and Working Group 8 (3D Spatial Data Integration for Disaster Management and Environmental Monitoring) of the ISPRS Commission IV (Geodatabases and Digital Mapping).

Secondly, the project CLOSE-SEARCH was presented on September, 16th 2011 at the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Geomatics 2011 (www.uav-g.ethz.ch), hosted by the ETH Zürich university. As using UAVs for data acquisition has become attractive for many emerging applications, UAV-g 2011 brings together experts in photogrammetry, surveying, robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence and aerospace engineering to create synergies between research and applications using UAVs in Geomatics.

Finally, the project CLOSE-SEARCH was presented on September, 23th 2011 at the Institute of Navigation (ION) GNSS 2011 (www.ion.org). Within the navigation commuity, the ION GNSS meeting is identified as one of the most attractive congresses in the world, bringing together experts in various fields related to navigation and yielding hundreds of scientific papers to the navigation community.

On November, 24th and 25th, a triple event took place in the frame of the CLOSE-SEARCH project.

Firstly, on November, 24th morning time, a User Advisory Board (UAB) meeting took place at the IG headquarters (Castelldefels). There a group of expert teams in SAR missions had the chance to get the latest news on the project development and prototype status, and in addition provided their expert point of view to the consortium. This meeting was the first of a total of three expected gatherings.

Also on Novermber 24th, afternoon time, the Mid-Term Review (MTR) was held in the same location. In that, the main work leading to the consolidation of the first CLOSE-SEARCH prototype was presented, reaching this way one important milestone.

Finally, on November, 25th, the whole crew moved to the town of Copons, in central Catalunya, to attend the demonstration of the prototype. Three flights were flown, demonstrating end-to-end capabilities of the proposed initial prototype. Some of the UAB members could also attend this event, which definetly was of high value to the project consotrium.