Monitor and control severe drought with analysis of data from Chollian

UNIST professor Jung Ho Im received a research grant in "Development of Space Core Technology" from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF Korea) last June.

Central Korea has been suffering from flooding while the southern part is complaining about hot and dry weather for the last couple of weeks. Weather patterns are no longer statistically predictable.

To mitigate this problem, professor Im's research team is developing a more accurate way to monitor and predict future weather changes.

The UNIST research team "Intelligent Remote Sensing and Geospatial Information Systems (IRIS)" led by Prof. Im, took a big step toward developing technology for monitoring climate change, including drought projection using GIS modeling, and past climate data.

"We started to work on developing technology which is able to predict the present as well as future weather changes based on the modeling data collected from the satellite Chollian, also known as Communication, Ocean and Meteorological Satellite 1 (COM-1)," said Prof. Im.

With this technology, we are able to monitor the progress of the drought in meteorological, agricultural, and hydrological aspects and to set up the strategies and actions against those problems by combining past weather data and the data from monitoring.

Prof. Im started the research on developing the technology last year, and was selected in the Development of Space Core Technology Program last June. "Developing drought monitoring system and its application through Convergence modeling of multi satellite data."

"Korea still needs to pay much closer attention to drought monitoring, prediction and its control. Research on these issues is not yet focused, but rather it is scattered around," said Prof. Im. "This research will be a step stone for cultivating experts and constructing infrastructure to utilize the advanced data from the satellites."

The IRIS research team also focuses on research topics including remote sensing, GIS modeling and artificial intelligence techniques to broaden and deepen our understanding of Earth systems under climate variability and changes.

"We would like to expand the application of monitoring system based on remote sensing to managing water resource, agriculture, and forest resource and urban planning through this research," said Prof. Im, showing his research plan. "We can protect human life by managing the information on climate changes of ecosystem, various disasters, water resource, and carbon circulations."

There are a total 13 of students in the IRIS lab including 6 graduate, 5 undergraduate students and 1 researcher under the guidance of Prof. Im. "I've been interested in the area of drought monitoring using satellite data," said a senior Seon Young Park from the School of Urban and Environmental Engineering. "I am so proud that our research could contribute to the prosperity of human."