Descrizione del progetto
Migliorare le stime del volume dei ghiacciai
I ghiacciai sono fondamentali per la vita sulla Terra ma, a causa del riscaldamento globale, stanno perdendo massa, il che accresce l’importanza di migliorare le stime del volume dei ghiacciai. Attualmente queste stime sono limitate dalla difficoltà di misurare direttamente lo spessore del ghiaccio. Il progetto SKYNET, finanziato dal programma di azioni Marie Skłodowska-Curie, si propone di elaborare un modello innovativo, basato sull’apprendimento profondo, in grado di sfruttare l’enorme quantità di dati satellitari disponibili per migliorare le attuali stime del volume di ghiaccio di tutti i ghiacciai della Terra. Il progetto si avvarrà, fra l’altro, di architetture di inpainting delle immagini all’avanguardia, alimentate con modelli digitali di elevazione basati su satellite.
Obiettivo
Estimating the ice volume of Earth's glaciers is a grand challenge of Earth System science. Besides being a critical parameter to model glacier evolution, knowledge of glacier volume is fundamental to quantify global sea level rise and available freshwater resources. Under current global warming glaciers are losing mass, making improved glacier ice volume estimates a top-priority to constrain future climate scenarios. Direct glacier ice volume estimates are limited by difficulty in directly measuring the ice thickness. As a result, estimates rely on models, many of which depend on explicit physical laws but require parameters often poorly constrained. Today, the amount of satellite data is increasing at such a rate that it cannot be efficiently exploited by traditional processing pipelines. At the same time, Artificial Intelligence techniques are becoming increasingly dominant problem-solving techniques. In particular, deep learning models have recently shown the ability to surpass human accuracy in many scientific tasks. The goal of the SKYNET project is to develop an innovative deep learning-based model capable of exploiting the huge amount of available satellite data to improve the current estimates of ice volumes of all Earth’s glaciers, from continental alpine glaciers to polar glaciers, including those in the periphery of Greenland and Antarctica. The proposed methodology makes use of state-of-the art image inpainting architectures fed with satellite-based digital elevation models (TanDEM-X,REMA), altimetry (NASA’s ICESat-2), gravity and ice surface velocity data to infer subglacial topographies hence ice volumes. Modelled topographies will be constrained towards realistic solutions using glacier ice thickness measurements (GlaThiDa repository) from in-situ and remotely sensed observations. SKYNET will be jointly developed by two leading institutions in glaciology and remote sensing: the University of Venice and the University of California Irvine.
Campo scientifico
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringremote sensing
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learningdeep learning
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeophysics
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geographyglaciology
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinatore
30123 Venezia
Italia