Bad weather, from the satellite map of areas flooded in Piedmont and Liguria – The Messenger

A little more than 24 hours of the event, weather and hydrology, which was severely hit by the Piemonte and the western Liguria, the satellite images of the constellation of the Italian CosmoSkyMed were made available, processed in maps of the flooded areas.

This has been possible thanks to the cooperation mechanisms developed in the context of the national system, as well as in the framework of the european civil protection mechanism. In particular, on the basis of the request formulated by the civil Protection Department in coordination with the Regions involved, the Italian Space Agency-ASI has initiated the planning agreed for the acquisition from the four satellites of the constellation of the data was th en processed by CIMA Foundation, Centre of competence of the Department of civil protection. Also, thanks to the Collaborative Ground Segment Italian and with the support of ESA, it has been possible to access the data that the mission Copernicus Sentinel-1 acquired in a regular manner on all the european territory.

In detail, thanks to the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, CosmoSkyMed, which allows you to capture images even in the night hours and in the presence of clouds, were produced maps of the flooded areas reported at 18.14 on November 24, and at 6.11 of November 25, an area that includes the areas most affected by flooding of the basins of the rivers Bormida, the Tanaro, Pellice and Po. The outflow of the full along the shaft of the latter will be monitored until Monday, November 28.

in Parallel, the civil Protection Department, through a request sent to the European Commission, has also enabled the support of the european service mapping satellite "Copernicus Emergency Management Service" to receive these products.

Thanks, then, to the co-operation virtuous defined in the years between the civil Protection Department, national Agency and european, scientific community and operational services at the european level to support the activities of civil protection, it was possible to have, in a few hours by the events of the emergency approaches, tools that allow both to monitor the situation to assess the immediate effects of what happened.