Towards Remote Sensing Datasets Collection and Processing

Abstract

The world is witnessing important increases in industrial, transport and agriculture activities. This leads to economic growth, but, on the other hand, causes substantial damage in urban air, due to emissions of harmful gases, mainly CO, SO₂, NO₂ and PM. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that daily exposure to pollutants causes approximately three millions of deaths (Smith et al. in Annu Rev Public Health 35(1):185–206, [3]). It is therefore necessary to assess continuously the air quality. In this context, a Java-based application was developed to acquire data from EUMETSAT geostationary and Polar Orbit satellites, through the Mediterranean Dialogue Earth Observatory (MDEO) terrestrial station (El Amrani et al. in Development of a real-time urban remote sensing initiative in the mediterranean region for early warning and mitigation of disasters. IEEE, pp. 2782–2785, [2]). This application filters, subsets, processes and visualizes products covering Morocco zone. Thanks to this program, significant correlations were found between emissions and industrial activities related to power thermal plants, factories, transportation and ports.