The Malta Council for Science and Technology awarded €150,000 of Malta's first-ever National Space Fund to a University of Malta interfaculty project. The project entitled “SATellite data Fusion and Imaging Resolution Enhancement for coastal areas” (SAT-FIRE) is led by Dr Ing. Gianluca Valentino together with Dr Ing. Reuben Farrugia (both from the Department of Communications and Computer Engineering, Faculty of and Communications Technology) and Dr Anthony Galea (from the Physical Oceanography Research Group, Department of Geosciences, Faculty of Science).
The main objective of this project is to improve the spatial resolution challenges of current Earth Observation Satellite systems by fusing complementary data from different spectral images from Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 data to improve both spatial and temporal resolution and quality of the satellite images. This will allow for more accurate predictions of marine currents, aiding divers, search and rescue operations and coastal monitoring.
This is an interdisciplinary project which lies at the intersection of satellite image processing, remote sensing, data fusion and hydrodynamical modelling. Two postgraduate students and a more experienced researcher (postdoc) will be engaged by the University of Malta through this project, to work on the data fusion and resolution enhancement, and the development of the registration algorithm, and to work on the improvement of hydrodynamical models for marine current prediction.
The National Space Fund is an initiative supported by the European Space Agency through a formalised Implementation Arrangement. The Space Research Fund provides financial support for research, development and innovation in the downstream Satellite Earth Observation (EO) sector, specifically through projects like the SAT-FIRE project that deal with the processing and exploitation of data collected through EO satellites.
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