Large-scale events represent a special challenge for crisis management. To ensure that participants can enjoy an event safely and carefree, it must be comprehensively prepared and attentively monitored. Remote sensing can provide valuable information to identify potential risks and take appropriate measures in order to prevent a disaster, or initiate emergency aid measures as quickly as possible in the event of an emergency. Especially, three-dimensional (3D) information that is derived using photogrammetry can be used to analyze the terrain and map existing structures that are set up at short notice. Using aerial imagery acquired during a German music festival in 2016 and the celebration of the German Protestant Church Assembly of 2017, the authors compare two-dimensional (2D) and novel fusion-based 3D change detection methods, and discuss their suitability for supporting large-scale events during the relevant phases of crisis management. This study serves to find out what added value the use of 3D change information can provide for on-site crisis management. Based on the results, an operational, fully automatic processor for crisis management operations and corresponding products for end users can be developed.

Flooding represents the most-occurring and deadliest threats worldwide among natural disasters. Consequently, new technologies are constantly developed to improve response capacities in crisis management. The remaining challenge for practitioner organizations is not only to identify the best solution to their individual demands, but also to test and evaluate its benefit in a realistic environment before the disaster strikes. To bridge the gap between theoretic potential and actual integration into practice, the EU-funded project DRIVER+ has designed a methodical and technical environment to assess innovation in a realistic but non-operational setup through trials. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) interdisciplinary merged mature technical developments into the “Airborne and terrestrial situational awareness” system and applied it in a DRIVER+ Trial to promote a sustainable and demand-oriented R&D. Experienced practitioners assessed the added value of its modules “KeepOperational” and “ZKI” in the context of large-scale flooding in urban areas. The solution aimed at providing contextual route planning in police operations and extending situational awareness based on information derived through aerial image processing. The user feedback and systematically collected data through the DRIVER + Test-bed approved that DLR’s system could improve transport planning and situational awareness across organizations. However, the results show a special need to consider, for example, cross-domain data-fusion techniques to provide essential 3D geo-information to effectively support specific response tasks during flooding.

The fastest growing regional crisis is happening in West Africa today, with over 8 million people considered persons of concern. A culmination of identity politics, climate-driven disasters, and extreme poverty has led to this humanitarian crisis in the region and is exacerbated by a lack of political will and misplaced media attention. The current state of the art does not present sufficient investigations of the thematic and spatial coverage of news media of this crisis in this region. This paper studies the spatial coverage of this crisis as reported in the media, and the themes associated with those locations, based on a curated dataset. For the time frame 12 March to 15 September 2021, 2017 news articles related to the refugee crisis in West Africa were examined and manually coded based on (1) the geographical locations mentioned in each article; (2) the themes found in the articles in reference to a location (e.g., Relocation of people in Abuja). The dataset introduces a thematic dimension, as never achieved before, to the conflict-ridden areas in West Africa. A comparative analysis with UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) data showed that 96.8% of refugee-related locations in West Africa were not covered by news during the considered time frame. Contrastingly, 80.4% of locations mentioned in the news do not appear in the UNHCR repository. Most news articles published during this time frame reported on Development aid or Political statements. Linear multiple regression analysis showed GDP per capita and political stability to be among the most influential determinants of news coverage.

In the context of the project OpSSERVE - Optical Satellite Services for EMSA (European Maritime Safety Agency) – the European Space Imaging (EUSI) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) established for the first time a fully operational and near real-time service to detect vessels and maritime activities with optical satellite imagery . The service was implemented in 2013 and contribute to maritime situation awareness, e.g. in order to reduce the risk of maritime accidents, marine pollution and the loss of human life at sea. Since its activation in 2007, EMSA’s CleanSeaNet (CSN) system provides pollution detection services in support of maritime surveillance and decision making for all participating European member states based on SAR satellite data. The main advantage of SAR data is their independence of weather conditions (cloud coverage), but the identification of small vessels is rather difficult. The use of very high resolution (VHR) optical data provides valuable information to identify small vessels. From the VHR optical imagery, actionable information products are created in an automatic processing chain including image pre-processing, data transcription, automatic vessel detection, GUI based interactive vessel and activity detection and finally the delivery of standardized products to EMSA. The service provides access to globally collected satellite imagery and receives data and derived products in near real-time (1 or 3 hours). In OpSSERVE, five satellite missions are available: WorldView-1, WorldView-2, GeoEye-1, IKONOS and EROS-B. The poster will present the experiences of the operational service and give an overview on future aspects and possible applications.

The management of large-scale events with a widely distributed camping area is a special challenge for organisers and security forces and requires both comprehensive preparation and attentive monitoring to ensure the safety of the participants. Crucial to this is the availability of up-to-date situational information, e.g. from remote sensing data. In particular, information on the number and distribution of people is important in the event of a crisis in order to be able to react quickly and effectively manage the corresponding rescue and supply logistics. One way to estimate the number of persons especially at night is to classify the type and size of objects such as tents and vehicles on site and to distinguish between objects with and without a sleeping function. In order to make this information available in a timely manner, an automated situation assessment is required. In this work, we have prepared the first high-quality dataset in order to address the aforementioned challenge which contains aerial images over a large-scale festival of different dates. We investigate the feasibility of this task using Convolutional Neural Networks for instance-wise semantic segmentation and carry out several experiments using the Mask-RCNN algorithm and evaluate the results. Results are promising and indicate the possibility of function-based tent classification as a proof-of-concept. The results and thereof discussions can pave the way for future developments and investigations.