On May 2018 the world’s first dual-frequency Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) smartphone produced by Xiaomi equipped with a Broadcom BCM47755 chip was launched. It is able to receive L1/E1/ and L5/E5 signals from GPS, Galileo, Beidou, and GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System) satellites. The main aim of this work is to achieve the phone’s position by using multi-constellation, dual frequency pseudorange and carrier phase raw data collected from the smartphone. Furthermore, the availability of dual frequency raw data allows to assess the multipath performance of the device. The smartphone’s performance is compared with that of a geodetic receiver. The experiments were conducted in two different scenarios to test the smartphone under different multipath conditions. Smartphone measurements showed a lower C/N0 and higher multipath compared with those of the geodetic receiver. This produced negative effects on single-point positioning as showed by high root mean square error (RMS). The best positioning accuracy for single point was obtained with the E5 measurements with a DRMS (horizontal root mean square error) of 4.57 m. For E1/L1 frequency, the 2DRMS was 5.36 m. However, the Xiaomi Mi 8, thanks to the absence of the duty cycle, provided carrier phase measurements used for a static single frequency relative positioning with an achieved 2DRMS of 1.02 and 1.95 m in low and high multipath sites, respectively.

On April 6, 2009, an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude struck central Italy with its epicentre near L'Aquila, at 42.3502° N, 13.3762° E. The earthquake damaged 3000 to 11 000 buildings in the medieval city of L'Aquila. Several buildings totally collapsed, 308 people were killed. The post emergency phase till now is just at its beginning step. Conventional surveying techniques using high precision total stations, GNSS receivers and laser scanners for investigations on damaged buildings are always becoming more automated, accurate and operative and even much more fast. Even if these techniques represent instruments of extreme operability there are still many evident limits on their use, especially regarding the survey of both the roofs and the facades of tall buildings or dangerous places, typical on post earthquake situations. So using micro UAVs for surveying in such particular cases, many of these problems can be easily bypassed. In fact, the present work aims on experimenting using multi-rotor micro UAVs, that will allow high quality image capturing on roofs and facades of structures in the old city center of L'Aquila. To obtain actual stereoscopic acquisitions of buildings some conditions on the geometry of acquisition have to be observed, for this reason, taking as a guideline classic flight photogrammetric, a flight planning software was developed. Accurate planning for UAVs acquisitions is very important also considering the reduced autonomy of such vehicles. This can be a strategic point if we want to use UAVs for early damage assessment and also for post event reconstruction planning.

Homegrown fruits and vegetables are gaining popularity in many metropolitan areas with several facets connected to the wider urban agriculture phenomenon. At the same time, the relationship between urban food production and irrigation water is pivotal in terms of resource management. In this paper, we investigated water savings through the collection and use of harvestable rainwater from buildings’ rooftops to irrigate 2631 fruits and vegetables gardens in the urban area of Rome (Italy). The methodology makes use of existing geospatial data and data derived from satellite image classification to estimate food gardens’ irrigation requirements and harvestable rainwater from nearby buildings’ rooftops. The comparison of the annual harvestable rainwater with irrigation needs allowed for computing the proportion of water self-sufficient gardens as well as the amount of gardens whose water needs might be partially fulfilled with rainwater. Statistics were produced by land use type (horticulture, mixed crops, olive groves, orchards, and vineyards) and under the hypothesis that irrigation systems with low and high field application efficiency might be employed. We found that 19% and 33% of the gardens could be water self-sufficient for the low and high irrigation efficiency scenario, respectively. The remaining gardens, by using the available rainwater, could satisfy 22% (low efficiency) and 44% (high efficiency) of the water needs resulting in a reduction in the use of conventional water sources.

Remote-pilot aircraft are developing very rapidly and their potential in the various fields is often still to be fully investigated. The possibility to fly over the areas to be surveyed without the need to access the areas themselves makes the use of UAVs in some cases certainly preferable for safety reasons, as has already been tested for the management of post-disaster areas. Waste landfills are small sites where contact with waste itself must be limited and scientific experimentation on surveying this specific type of site is currently limited. The results obtained in other types of sites or infrastructures are not automatically applied to waste landfills due to the specific geometrical characteristics and texture of the images that can be obtained at sites like these. In this work, a test on an exhausted landfill has been carried out with attention to the accurate survey of a large number of control points necessary for a correct assessment of the final geometric accuracy. The use of ground control points and checkpoints has allowed the separate evaluation of precision and accuracy, which are very close to those obtained with the most common methods for these sites, such as laser scanning and total stations.

Coastal environments are facing constant changes over time due to their dynamic nature and geological, geomorphological, hydrodynamic, biological, climatic and anthropogenic factors. For these reasons, the monitoring of these areas is crucial for the safeguarding of the cultural heritage and the populations living there. The focus of this paper is shoreline extraction by means of an experimental algorithm, called J-Net Dynamic (Semeion Research Center of Sciences of Communication, Rome, Italy). It was tested on two types of image: a very high resolution (VHR) multispectral image (WorldView-2) and a high resolution (HR) radar synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image (Sentinel-1). The extracted shorelines were compared with those manually digitized for both images independently. The results obtained with the J-Net Dynamic algorithm were also compared with common algorithms, widely used in the literature, including the WorldView water index and the Canny edge detector. The results show that the experimental algorithm is more effective than the others, as it improves shoreline extraction accuracy both in the optical and SAR images.

Knowledge of a territory is an essential element in any future planning action and in appropriate territorial and environmental requalification action planning. The current large-scale availability of satellite data, thanks to very high resolution images, provides professional users in the environmental, urban planning, engineering, and territorial government sectors, in general, with large amounts of useful data with which to monitor the territory and cultural heritage. Italy is experiencing environmental emergencies, and coastal erosion is one of the greatest threats, not only to the Italian heritage and economy, but also to human life. The aim of this paper is to find a rapid way of identifying the instantaneous shoreline. This possibility could help government institutions such as regions, civil protection, etc., to analyze large areas of land quickly. The focus is on instantaneous shoreline extraction in Ortona (CH, Italy), without considering tides, using WorldView-2 satellite images (50-cm resolution in panchromatic and 2 m in multispectral). In particular, the main purpose of this paper is to compare commercial software and ACM filters to test their effectiveness.