High-Level Project Summary
Our challenge was to explain to non-scientists the concept of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), by the means of a simple video where we incorporated all the necessary information in a simplified way. The goal of this project is to shed the light on this amazing radar for the general public to know its importance on their daily lives (by detecting earthquakes and other natural disasters), and its capability to minimize human losses.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
In this project we focused on what does this radar do, how does it work and its role in detecting natural disasters in advance, especially earthquakes and volcanoes. It uses penetrating radio waves making it capable of working in all weather conditions. It sends out these waves and detects the reflected ones and analyses the ground shift which, if it’s large enough, can be a sign that a natural disaster may occur. In such cases it sends out warnings to the citizens in the endangered area to evacuate. So in the video we’ll start with defining the radar, its mechanism, and its different types. Then move to some of its roles in detecting natural disasters, and we’ll talk in depth about earthquakes and volcanoes. Finally we’ll finish it by mentioning SAR missions of different agencies. we chose the tone of the video to be sarcastic to attract the viewers about explanation of SAR, thus, SAR-castic explanation.
Space Agency Data
We implemented in this project data from both NASA and ESA. We used the highly scientific and complex information provided by these space agencies, and transformed them into a much simpler vocabulary for the general public to understand without being bothered by the complicated formulas and scientific terms.
Hackathon Journey
This space apps experience was one of a kind! We learned how to collaborate with one another during these hard times of the pandemic which forced us to work remotely. We chose this challenge to spread science to the general public in a simple and fun way especially since some of the team members aren’t familiar with the field. That’s why the scientists took care of the information part and the others took care of forming the video and organizing the project. As for the setbacks we organized virtual meetings to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
References
links:
https://nisar.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/get-to-know-sar/polarimetry
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/maps-tools-and-publications/satellite-imagery-and-air-photos/satellite-imagery-products/educational-resources/tutorial-radar-polarimetry/polarimetric-interferometry/9565
https://copernicus.eu/user-guides/sentinel-1-sar/product-overview/interferometry
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar/
NASA youtube channel
ESA youtube channel
Tags
#satellite #natural_disasters #radar #volcano #earthqauke #antenna #SAR #InSAR #PolSAR #NASA #ESA #JAXA #NISAR #
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.