DOI: 10.4018/IJERTCS.2019070104
International Journal of Embedded and Real-Time Communication Systems
Volume 10 • Issue 3 • July-September 2019
Copyright © 2019, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
49
Towards Remote Sensing Datasets
Collection and Processing
Badreddine Boudriki Semlali, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Tétouan, Morocco
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0671-4808
El Amrani Chaker, Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Tétouan, Morocco
ABSTRACT
The world is witnessing important increases in industrial, transport and agriculture activities. This
leads to economic growth, but, on the other hand, causes substantial damage in urban air, due to
emissions of harmful gases, mainly CO, SO
2
, NO
2
and the Particular Matter (PM). The World Health
Organization (WHO) confirms that daily exposure to pollutants causes approximately three million
deaths. It is therefore necessary to assess continuously the air quality. In this context, a Java-based
application was developed to acquire data from EUMETSAT geostationary and Polar Orbit satellites,
through the Mediterranean Dialogue Earth Observatory (MDEO) terrestrial station. This application
filters, subsets, processes and visualizes products covering Morocco zone. Significant correlations
were found between emissions and industrial activities related to power thermal plants, factories,
transportation and ports.
KEywoRDS
Air Pollution, Data Processing, Data Visualization, JAVA Application, Remote Sensing
1. INTRoDUCTIoN
Satellite data of atmospheric and earth components are becoming widely used by some large scientific
communities (Navalgund, Jayaraman, & Roy, 2007). Remote sensing techniques aim to collect
information about a remote object without making a physical contact with it (Schowengerdt, 2007).
These techniques employ satellites helping to monitor air quality and supervising climate changes.
Currently, there are several satellites specially designed for air quality monitoring, providing measuring
the density and concentration of many traces gases such as: nitrogen dioxide (NO
2
), Sulfur Dioxide
(SO
2
), Carbon Monoxide (CO), Carbon Dioxide (CO
2
), Methane (CH
4
) and Aerosol Optical depth
(AOD). Satellites are also used from tracking air pollution plumes, supporting air quality forecasting,
estimating anthropogenic pollution emissions and monitoring long term trends ambient pollutants
concentration (Duncan et al., 2014). Recently, the world is suffering air pollution and the increase of
natural disasters. Thus, The World Health Organization (WHO) recently reported that around four
million people die annually due to their exposure to the outdoor air pollution (Smith et al., 2014). That
is why the continuous monitoring of air quality is highly significant, by preventing or reducing eventual
hazards or damages, and helping in the decision makers. For this purpose, we developed a JAVA-
based application that acquire, filter, and process satellite data in near-real-time. We have collected
data from the Mediterranean Dialogue Earth Observatory (MDEO) platform represented, enabling
a near-real time access to various polar and geostationary satellites of EUMETSAT organization, in