Airborne real-time mapping and monitoring

Kurzfassung

In cases of large scale events and disasters public offices and organizations with security responsibilities as well as traffic authorities need accurate and reliable information for situation awareness. These pieces of information are used by the authorities to quickly meet decisions in order to safely and efficiently manage such events with the given resources. Particularly, information on the transportation system and traffic are of great importance, because the mobility of the public and relief teams is crucial for fast disaster relief. The VABENE++ Traffic Management for Large Scale Events and Disasters is a project of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to develop tools for data acquisition, information extraction from several sources, decision support, and data distribution. Aerial images enable fast assessment of the situation of the target area and are therefore well suited for disaster relief applications. Each of the 4k camera systems, developed by the DLR, consists of three non-metric off-the-shelf-cameras, of which one is nadir looking, and two are side-wards looking. The 4k system can be mounted in along-track or across-track mode, in the two research aircrafts, Cessna 208B Grand Caravan and Dornier DO228-212. The camera system was further developed and implemented as a 4k camera system, which can be mounted on a helicopter BO105. The 4k system can acquire real time HD video with the nadir camera. As soon as the images are acquired, they are georeferenced with a real time GPS/IMU data and orthorectified using digital elevation model. According to the required information, additional thematic processing aboard is carried out, such as automatic traffic information extraction. Then, the images and extracted information are transmitted over a microwave data link to the ground station and distributed to the end users. The main backbone of the processing chain is the traffic data platform (TDP), where all acquired data and extracted traffic information and derived products are centrally stored. All the available data are combined to gain an overview of the situational information. The TDP is realized as a mobile mTDP or stationary sTDP. The former is used in mobile ground stations and the latter is centrally hosted at the DLR. The mTDP synchronizes with the sTDP whenever the internet connection is available. One example for a support system for decision makers, such as rescues forces and traffic management, is a web-based portal. It combines real-time aerial and ground-based traffic monitoring data and visualizes them. The traffic state is estimated and additionally, the traffic prognosis and simulations are computed to identify possible bottleneck places, e.g. in evacuation scenarios or for the logistics of the rescue forces. The VABENE++ system ensures real-time data availability through high degree of automation of the entire workflow. The mobile ground station and several platforms, on which the camera system can be mounted, enable usage of the complete system in various scenarios, from mapping applications to the vehicle tracking and traffic situation assessment. It was shown through several field-tests that the system works reliably and can serve as additional source of information for decision makers.