Project
Airbus / Local Resilience Forum Sprint
Project managed 12 researchers to deliver a situational awareness pilot for emergency responders inside a one-month sprint supporting a multi-million-pound grant bid.
- Python
- ML
- GIS
- Real-time Pipelines
- Change Detection
Core problem
Local Resilience Forums needed a way to fuse static hazard data with live, on-the-ground signal during incidents — fast enough to be useful and credible enough to underpin a major grant application.
Architecture
Architected a dashboard integrating spatial risk-ratings for waste and fire hazards with ML-driven change-detection on satellite imagery. Engineered a real-time social media scraping pipeline to ingest, parse, and rank the severity of localised hazard reports during crisis events. Coordinated a cross-functional team of 12 across data, ML, and front-end roles.
Business impact
Delivered a working pilot inside a one-month window that supported a multi-million-pound grant application — demonstrating an ability to direct a sizeable team end-to-end against an immovable deadline.
Abstract: Space is one of the UK’s fastest-growing industry sectors of the last decade. Recognising this, in 2021 the UK Government’s first National Space Strategy established a new vision to make the nation one of the most innovative and attractive worldwide space economies. As part of the strategic funding programme, in 2023, the UK Space Agency (UKSA) funded a scoping study to assess the potential of satellite data to address issues that the three North East England Local Resilience Forums face at all stages of implementing the UK’s Integrated Emergency Management Framework (IEMF). Through dedicated workshops convened by two North East England universities, regional stakeholders from the emergency domain and related industries identified three case studies ripe for applying satellite data in support of multi-agency IEMF activities. Master’s students in the UK’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Geospatial Systems then undertook a month-long integrated group project to assess the potential for satellite imagery to be applied in the identified application areas. The research reported in this paper demonstrates how satellite imagery may be adopted to help address challenges posed during power outages, for mitigating illegal waste site fires, and during periods of snow and extreme cold. While the maturity levels of satellite applications vary in the three case studies due to data availability and image resolution, all three cases demonstrate that space data, particularly when augmented with additional geospatial information, help to enhance IEMF analysis. It is anticipated that the findings from the study will help stakeholders involved in IEMF management appreciate the added value of integrating satellite data into their current processes and analyses. By empowering key stakeholders to use satellite applications more effectively, it is predicted that better decisions will be achieved, thereby improving emergency risk management. A prototype dashboard, an output of the research to demonstrate the potential of space data for emergency management, is available online.
