Announcement – Integrative geospatial science for disaster risk management @ EGU 2010
By Christoph Aubrecht, posted on November 2nd, 2009 in Announcements, Disasters, Earth Observation
The annual General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union will be held in Vienna, Austria from 02-07 May 2010. EGU 2010, one of the most prestigious events in the field of geoscience, will bring together scientists from all over the world, covering all disciplines of the Earth, planetary and space sciences. The session program was recently approved by the program committee with the deadline for abstract submission set at 18 January 2010.
Earthzine will support a special session within the Natural Hazards Program Group dedicated to the concept of disaster management which is one of the GEOSS societal benefit areas. Following the conference, selected accepted and presented abstracts will be proposed for extended publication in a related special issue of Earthzine (scheduled for July/August 2010).
The session Integrative geospatial science for disaster risk management – Multi source applications and concepts aims at attracting an interdisciplinary attendance from diverse research fields related to geospatial problems in disaster risk management. The cyclic concept of disaster management serves as background and outline in order to have comprehensive discussions on all related aspects ranging from emergency response via risk analysis including hazard and vulnerability assessment to mitigation and early warning.
The concept of GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems – which is seen as a global and flexible network to provide an extensive range of information and decision support tools about the system of the Earth to a variety of users – highlights disasters as one of its nine societal benefit areas. GEOSS integrates Earth observations with other information to help planners reduce vulnerability, strengthen preparedness and early-warning measures and, after disaster strikes, rebuild housing and infrastructure in ways that limit future risks. This backs up the recent trend in dealing with disaster issues using more holistic and integrated approaches, which is also evident in the scientific literature.
Multi source and multi scale geospatial and space related information as derived from remote sensing and ancillary data sources provide broad possibilities to consistently and quantitatively cover complex aspects of disaster management. The spatial component in most cases is essential in order to get comprehensive insight and merge from theoretical to applied result-oriented research.
Both conceptual and applied contributions from all fields of research featuring a geospatial component are invited for submission to this session.The organizing team is looking forward to an interesting program including innovative geospatial approaches in disaster management and aims at raising awareness about pending issues in integrative analysis of complex human-natural coupled systems.
Direct links to session and abstract submission:
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/session/2619
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2010/abstractsubmission/2619
Convener:
C. Aubrecht – Earthzine Deputy Editor (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria)
christoph.aubrecht@ait.ac.at
Co-Conveners:
B. Pradhan – Earthzine Associate Editor for Disasters (Dresden University of Technology, Germany)
S. Freire (New University of Lisbon, Portugal)
P. Zeil, S. Kienberger (Salzburg University, Austria)
K. Steinnocher (AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, Austria)
NASA Daily Image
Remnant of a Supernova
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy. The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion. Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant. These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech