Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GATHERS (Integration of Geodetic and imAging TecHiques for monitoring and modelling the Earth's surface defoRmations and Seismic risk)
Reporting period: 2019-12-01 to 2021-09-30
The European Research Area (ERA) ambition is to create a competitive, unified, excellence driven and application oriented research landscape. This initiative needs to take into account that the top 5 countries in Europe (Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy, Austria) that are continuously investing 2.1% of their budgets to science and innovation for last 50-60 years, were joined in last 20 years by nations that went a long road to free and open market, democracy and competitive open science, through the number of financial and societal crises. These countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Slovakia, in order to use and provide their full potential to the European economy and global competitiveness, need role models, best practices, shifts in scientific research culture, and develop leaders. Therefore to build an united, competitive, excellence and innovation driven landscape, there is a need for funding like the WIDESPREAD programme.
The GATHERS project is at the hearth of the objective posed by the WIDESPREAD programme, as it aims to:
* develop the geospatial sciences to enlarge the number of research-intensive sections of one of the most research-oriented universities in Poland - Wroclaw University of Environments and Life Sciences (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu in Polish, or UPWr).
* establish strong networks with the best universities in Europe to form competitive research applications in Horizon programs.
* train leaders in Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) seismology techniques for Earth’s surface deformation and seismic risk monitoring.
These objectives are being addressed in very specific and challenging environment as the project partners are among the top research and technical universities in Europe (TU Delft, TU Vienna, La Sapienza University of Rome), the project business partners are mining industries (raw and energy) and the Green Transformation is changing the landscape of extractive business across Europe. These factors make GATHERS an unique driver for change in the research landscape in Widening countries, not only from a scientific but also a societal point of view.
The GATHERS project is at the hearth of the objective posed by the WIDESPREAD programme, as it aims to:
* develop the geospatial sciences to enlarge the number of research-intensive sections of one of the most research-oriented universities in Poland - Wroclaw University of Environments and Life Sciences (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu in Polish, or UPWr).
* establish strong networks with the best universities in Europe to form competitive research applications in Horizon programs.
* train leaders in Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) seismology techniques for Earth’s surface deformation and seismic risk monitoring.
These objectives are being addressed in very specific and challenging environment as the project partners are among the top research and technical universities in Europe (TU Delft, TU Vienna, La Sapienza University of Rome), the project business partners are mining industries (raw and energy) and the Green Transformation is changing the landscape of extractive business across Europe. These factors make GATHERS an unique driver for change in the research landscape in Widening countries, not only from a scientific but also a societal point of view.
As the project aims to bring a new research culture to one of the widening countries, and develop understanding of the horizontal impact of science and technology the core of the project is focused on training, knowledge exchange and building capacity.
The training within the GATHERS project was undertaken so far by six UPWr researchers from two groups: Early Stage Researchers and Experienced Researchers. They spend in total 12 months (on-line and in-person) together with the best performing researchers in the EU to understand the culture of excellence that drives innovation. These trainings play the important role in scientific activities of UPWr researchers resulting in presentations at national and international conferences, publications in leading research journals in the field (ie. IEEE TGRS), applying and getting funding from national research agencies (National Science Foundation), obtaining PhD degrees with outstanding qualifications.
Moreover, meetings with business partners: producers and consumers of the research and innovation, made a clear pathway for further development of applied research in the field of satellite and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based remote sensing, not only at the level of UPWr university but through the engagement with other top Polish universities.
Last but not least, the strategy to engage the top researchers from EU universities in preparation of the summer schools has brought an outstanding number of participants in the one-week long event, orchestrated by UPWr. 26 young researchers from 9 countries were training and working together to achieve better understanding of strengths and weaknesses of geospatial technologies. The Summer School was organised in the region that is now at the heart of Green Transformation in Europe - Silesia (Upper, Opole and Lower) with 8,5 mln inhabitants and declining mining industry and booming ICT and industry 4.0 sectors.
The training within the GATHERS project was undertaken so far by six UPWr researchers from two groups: Early Stage Researchers and Experienced Researchers. They spend in total 12 months (on-line and in-person) together with the best performing researchers in the EU to understand the culture of excellence that drives innovation. These trainings play the important role in scientific activities of UPWr researchers resulting in presentations at national and international conferences, publications in leading research journals in the field (ie. IEEE TGRS), applying and getting funding from national research agencies (National Science Foundation), obtaining PhD degrees with outstanding qualifications.
Moreover, meetings with business partners: producers and consumers of the research and innovation, made a clear pathway for further development of applied research in the field of satellite and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based remote sensing, not only at the level of UPWr university but through the engagement with other top Polish universities.
Last but not least, the strategy to engage the top researchers from EU universities in preparation of the summer schools has brought an outstanding number of participants in the one-week long event, orchestrated by UPWr. 26 young researchers from 9 countries were training and working together to achieve better understanding of strengths and weaknesses of geospatial technologies. The Summer School was organised in the region that is now at the heart of Green Transformation in Europe - Silesia (Upper, Opole and Lower) with 8,5 mln inhabitants and declining mining industry and booming ICT and industry 4.0 sectors.
Geospatial technologies developed in the past were used separately to resolve particular problems related to geometrical deformations (infrastructure protection, insurance claims, safety). InSAR is a large area technology that semi-continuously (weekly repetition rate) monitors changes in the land and infrastructure geometrical changes, but its spatial resolution is relatively low and it is prone to biases. On the other hand, GNSS can deliver complete geometrical observations of very high accuracy and with very high rate for single stations, however it is a point-based method, thus no information is provided in between stations. LiDAR has unprecedented spatial resolution but its temporal resolution with respect to InSAR is low and geometrical accuracy is lower than GNSS and InSAR. Until GATHERS not many researchers were looking into using all these observations together, not in an area prone to deformations as Silesia (1.5m/year) not in a context of large shift of economy, not in a widening country like Poland, not with partners from the mining sector.
Scientific outcomes of the project may also influence socio-economic aspects. Better understanding of the mine induced deformation phenomena may help to mitigate consequences caused to the infrastructure or take appropriate preventive actions.
All these makes GATHERS project unique on the scientific, innovation and societal level. Driving changes in the way the widening country economy and science is run.
Scientific outcomes of the project may also influence socio-economic aspects. Better understanding of the mine induced deformation phenomena may help to mitigate consequences caused to the infrastructure or take appropriate preventive actions.
All these makes GATHERS project unique on the scientific, innovation and societal level. Driving changes in the way the widening country economy and science is run.