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Bangalore, Karnataka | What on Earth is Synthetic Aperture Radar?

What On Earth is Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR)?

High-Level Project Summary

Our challenge was to read about Synthetic Aperture Radar and explain it in a way that even non-technical people(like family or friends) can understand. SAR is rapidly becoming a key dataset in geospatial investigation. In recent years, due to an ever-increasing number of orbital SAR instruments, and more yet to come, there has been a significant increase in data quality and availability requiring processing software to evolve. As a result, automated SAR-based analytical workflows can now run at-scale to solve problems across a wide range of disciplines like disaster management, urban development .

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZJk3G_CEx9v-c1qj_4PrU_dEnA1veRXx/view?usp=sharing

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YJcW9S9m1WBrAhGm7SkkTjyT0gNDinAv/view?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

What exactly does it do?

-A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an active sensor that first transmits microwave signals and then receives back the signals that are returned, or backscattered, from the Earth’s surface.

How does it work? What benefits does it have?

-Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) bounces a microwave radar signal off the Earth’s surface to detect physical properties. A synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is an active sensor that first transmits microwave signals and then receives back the signals that are returned, or backscattered, from the Earth’s surface. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) bounces a microwave radar signal off the Earth’s surface to detect physical properties. Unlike optical technology, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can “see” through darkness, clouds, and rain, detecting changes in habitat, levels of water and moisture, effects of natural or human disturbance, and changes in the Earth’s surface after events such as earthquakes or sinkhole openings.

These traditional satellite observations from visible, infrared, and microwave sources are indispensable to tropical cyclone forecasting, and they provide information about storm characteristics and the surrounding atmospheric and oceanic conditions driving them. But they also all have limitations. Visible and infrared imagery of these storms is primarily restricted to features observed at or near cloud tops. And although microwave sensors can observe features beneath the clouds, they lack sufficient horizontal resolution to capture the steep wind speed gradients around the eye of a storm. But there is another type of sensor that overcomes these limitations: synthetic aperture radar.

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) provides highly detailed views of wind speed at the ocean surface under the tropical cyclones as they travel and evolve.

What do you hope to achieve? What tools, coding languages, hardware, or software did you use to develop your project?

-We used the data provided by NISSAR, Sentinel-1, ALOS-2. We hope to make the public understand the working and importance of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

Space Agency Data

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-sar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xemo2ZpduHA&ab_channel=NASAVideo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xemo2ZpduHA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em41MxplcDc

https://2021.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/statements/what-on-earth-is-synthetic-aperture-radar/resources

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2bUKEi9It4&ab_channel=ScottManley

Hackathon Journey

We came across NASA Space Apps challenge while we were randomly browsing the web in need of a hackathon or some technical competition to participate in. We both are extremely interested in space and love to read space related articles, or watch some documentaries or movies on space. We really enjoy spending time amidst nature. We go on a lot of hikes and treks. It would be disheartening to see that there are fewer vegetation on the trail and what all global warming has done to this planet. So, we immediately decided to register for this challenge.

Our space apps experience was really insightful as we got to learn a lot of new concepts and topics. This challenge has fueled curiosity in us and we will definitely continue reading more such articles. It for sure wasn't an easy challenge. We had a few setbacks and some time constraints but despite that we really enjoyed what we were working on , so it didn't really feel like a burden on us. We both have our college internals starting from Monday, so it was pretty challenging to get the materials ready for the challenge and present it in the best way possible with the resources and limited time that we have. Climate change is such an underrated problem that we are facing right now. SAR plays a huge role in solving climate related problems, global warming, minimizing the risk of natural disasters and also reduces the impact of after-effect thus saving lives. We learnt about how SAR works and what importance it has in the current situation.

We saw a bunch of online videos, articles and journals to try and understand SAR and its working. It is a very vast topic and we decided to not get too much into the technicalities and explain it in the most effective way possible and staying true to the challenge.

References