Space Economy, Satellite Remote Sensing, Hyperspectral acquisitions, Geospatial Processing, GIS, Precision Farming

Precision Farming

Support sDiv projects with informatics capacity as well as sDiv researchers by developing data integration and analytical tools/pipeline as per the project requirements.Collaborate closely with the Biodiversity lnformatics Unit (BDU) ensuring that, where appropriate, the tools become integrated into the iDiv Biodiversity Data Portal.Jointly work with the BDU and other iDiv researchers for building iDiv biodiversity research data infrastructure and services and for integrating existing tools and components.Writing scientific papers and present results at national and international meetings.Teaching at iDiv.

Scientific/Technical Support Officer - Grantholder cat.30 for a three years Post-Doc position at the Forest Resources and Climate Unit (H03) of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability (EC/JRC) for RS/GIS support (analyst programmer). Main activities were the implementation of the Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS) and the improvement and integration of a new methodology for the fire emissions and dispersion assessment into the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS). MODIS/VIIRS fire products (burned areas) were processed into an integrated model, with meteorological data (ECMWF, DWD), DEMs, maps of forest types and fire fuels, to forecast the gas emissions/dispersions into the atmosphere. The fire emissions are assessed through the estimation of the fire behaviour based on the fuel consumption (USDA models: FOFEM5 and CONSUME3), the fire dispersions are estimated using different models as CHIMERE, SWIFT AND SCHICHEM. The resulting shapefiles will be uploaded on the EFFIS Web Service (http://forest.jrc.ec.europa.eu/effis/).

GIS support for integrated water resources management in the frame of the EU Blueprint for Water.RS/GIS support (analyst programmer) in the Project funded by EC: “Blueprint to safeguard Europe's Waters”, c/o the Water Resources Unit (H01/IES) of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability. The main job activity is the development of a software interface (using Python, PCRaster, GDAL/OGR libraries, and others) between different biophysical models (LISQUAL, EPIC, LUMP, etc.). The main purpose of the work is to develop and run a set of scripts (python modules) for a multi-objective optimization with a set of simplified biophysical models. This Multi-Criteria Decision Models (MCDM) provide a tool for identifying optimum strategies for the water management in Europe, through different environmental parameters (produced by the different biophysical models) taken into account.

Post-Doctoral Researcher c/o the AgriART Srl belonging to the Research Centre “Il Pischiello - ARTGroup”. Post-Doc Fellowship awarded by “Provincia di Siena (Italy)”. The research is focused on the application of aerial remote sensing techniques using a multispectral camera installed in a UAV and integration of the environmental measured data (climatic, agronomic, etc.) in a GIS application for farm advisory.

PhD Research on Precision Farming applied on vineyard. Use of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) applications to improve the water management on vineyard cultivation. Comparison between two evapotranspiration measures estimated by the application of a water balance model (VSIM) and an energy balance model (SEBAL). An IDL (ITT Visual Information Solutions) script was implemented to help to process all the data (satellite images and climatic data) in an iterative procedure.

Visiting Student in the project VSIM (Vineyard Soil Irrigation Model) c/o the Ecological Forecasting Laboratory of NASA Ames Research Park, as part of PhD research. The activities were: processing of Landsat 5 and 7 images and airborne acquisitions (ENVI, ERDAS) to identify the plant water stress in order to study the water needs in wine crops in Napa Valley (California); ground measurement activities of plant phenology, LAI, stem water potential and more; comparison between energy balance (SEBAL) and water mass balance (VSIM) models for actual evapotranspiration assessment and implementation of results using a GIS application (ArcGIS, QGIS).