Methodology integration of EO techniques as operative tool for land degradation management and planning in Mediterranean areas
The project MILDMAP-MEDIA is mainly addressed to the integration of different methodologies and techniques for monitoring, analysis and assessment of physical processes in order to improve the decisional chain for the control and prevention of natural hazards. The aim is to define a common decision support system and procedures to be shared and applied by the operational institution involved in the land and territory management operating in Mediterranean areas. The actions would not be restricted to the analysis. assessment and mapping of losses directly caused by natural phenomena related to land degradation, but will be extended to the analysis of functionality and vulnerability of territorial elements and their interactions. To achieve such target, a common methodology, able to synthesize and organize all information directly obtained by earth observation and remote control and/or by modelling, will be applied in order to establish the criticalities of the territorial systems and support the definition of policies, strategies and/or interventions for the land degradation control. This highlights the flexibility of the methodology that, in this way, will be applied to different contexts in each target areas afflicted by similar criticalities with respect to three pilot actions like desertification, land coverage change, soil loss, erosion an hydraulics and hydrological modelling. The main steps proposed refer to the knowledge of the state of art concerning the data availability, operational systems and networking among the involved partners. Further, with respect to the over mentioned pilot actions, data will be collected and shared as well as the modelling of some hydraulics and hydrological parameters will be carried on, in order to define a suitable data set to be used as inputs for the vulnerability modelling of the target area territories. Such model will constitute the backbone of the decision support system to be developed and applied for land degradation management and planning. Such activities will be carried on by the project partners and by the involvement of several local end-users and stakeholders (ARPAB, CNR-IMAA, ALSIA and METES) operating in the selected regions. They will provide data and tools for analyses and modelling as well as supporting the results dissemination and the training activity which represent a further pilot action to be implemented in the project. Several deliverables will be performed like reports, guideline, databases, GIS-maps, etc.