IST hosts AGEO Technical meeting in Lisbon

AGEO Technical Meeting was held on the 22nd of June in Lisbon, Portugal. The event was hosted by IST Lisbon, with a hybrid format allowing participants to attend on site and online. 

The goals for this meeting were to increase the interaction between partners, to share ideas about the design of the app and the development of workflow to incorporate new data, develop the risk management systems and to promote the use of the AGEO toolbox for InSar processing.

AGEO app, now in iOS

Levent Görgü, from UCD, shared the progress being made on the AGEO app. In this new version, bugs related to picture uploading have been corrected. For the iPhone users, the iOS version is now ready and available for testers. Furthermore, two new tools were presented: a dashboard for managers and a search tool that can be used to download and for manual data extraction data gathered by AGEO App

Developments in InSAR tool

Xiaowen Wang, from UCD, introduced the work being done on the inSAR tool. This open source software for multi-temporal displacement analysis now integrates three of the most popular open source inSAR tools. In addition to that, a version of the tool using Python is being developed.

Risk management

LNEC shared their framework on risk management systems that are being developed and that will be used in the prevention and mitigation, as well as in the preparedness for them. The goal is to use geohazard events as a positive opportunity to learn, using the data collected in order to build back better during the recovery and reconstruction phase. This framework uses inSar tools to monitor ground movement and integrate it with other monitoring instruments for Risk Management. The next step is the development of similar frameworks for different types of geohazards adjusting the inputs received from each pilot.

As a part of this topic, Delta Silva introduced KnowRisk as an example of risk communication, a project aiming to foster knowledge on seismic risk and non-structural protective measures, stimulate the formation of beliefs that encourage the adoption of protective measures and encourage the development of protective behavior intentions.

Edutainment in AGEO

IST presented about how to include quality educational contents that are also entertaining for the users to be implemented in the AGEO app. This is essential, as increased awareness and knowledge of local threats and active involvement in disaster risk reduction among all community members -including children – are needed to create a culture of risk reduction. As a part of this effort, an example on how to present this information was shown with the objective that users know the hazards and causes, distinguish main effects, and understand self-protection measures.

Field trip

In the afternoon session, AGEO members visited the tsunami early warning system and the Quake Museum, a learning space dedicated to earthquakes and the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake.