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Starting from Cable connections to various options in satellite TV brands, the transition paved the way gradually for free content on applications like YouTube, which further led to the demand for quality content on OTT platforms. Over-the- Top or OTT is the abbreviation for "over-the-top” which is a new age streaming of films and TV series over the web without the need for traditional cable, or satellite pay-TV providers;the consumers can stream across multiple gadgets according to our time convenience. Beginning in the late 90s, the early 2000s marked the era of Television streaming in India. The first OTT application launched in India was BigFix, which changed the course of content consumption in our country. The Television industry once driven by cable and satellite operators has transitioned into a consumer-driven domain. Unlike TV, which requires a cable connection or an antenna, OTT material is delivered directly over Online platforms and paid for directly by viewers. The implications are that the consumers may get OTT services including video, voice, messaging and audio services, at any time and from any location, which serves to be a significant advantage over traditional TV programming. In this paper, we focus on how this paradigm change took place and what impact it has created, especially since the pandemic. © 2023 IEEE.
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Long-term spatiotemporal Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) analysis is an objective tool for assessing patterns of sustainable development (SD). The basic purpose of this research is to define the Driving Mechanisms (DM) and assess the trend of SD in the Burabay district (Kazakhstan), which includes a city, an agro-industrial complex, and a national natural park, based on the integrated use of spatiotemporal data (STD), economic, environmental, and social (EES) indicators. The research was performed on the GEE platform using Landsat and Random Forest. The DM were studied by Multiple Linear Regression and Principal Component Analysis. SD trend was assessed through sequential transformations, aggregations, and integrations of 36 original STD and EES indicators. The overall classification accuracy was 0.85–0.97. Over the past 23 years, pasture area has changed the most (−16.69%), followed by arable land (+14.72%), forest area increased slightly (+1.81%), and built-up land—only +0.16%. The DM of development of the AOI are mainly economic components. There has been a noticeable drop in the development growth of the study area in 2021, which is apparently a consequence of the COVID-19. The upshots of the research can serve as a foundation for evaluating SD and LULC policy.
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Vaccination uptake has become the key factor that will determine our success in containing the coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) pandemic. Efficient distribution of vaccines to inoculation spots is crucial to curtailing the spread of the novel COVID-19 pandemic. Normally, in a big city, a huge number of vaccines need to be transported from central depot(s) through a set of satellites to widely scattered inoculation spots by special-purpose vehicles every day. Such a large two-echelon vehicle routing problem is computationally difficult. Moreover, the demands for vaccines evolve with the epidemic spread over time, and the actual demands are hard to determine early and exactly, which not only increases the problem difficulty but also prolongs the distribution time. Based on our practical experience of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in China, we present a hybrid machine learning and evolutionary computation method, which first uses a fuzzy deep learning model to forecast the demands for vaccines for each next day, such that we can predistribute the forecasted number of vaccines to the satellites in advance;after obtaining the actual demands, it uses an evolutionary algorithm (EA) to route vehicles to distribute vaccines from the satellites/depots to the inoculation spots on each day. The EA saves historical problem instances and their high-quality solutions in a knowledge base, so as to capture inherent relationship between evolving problem inputs to solutions;when solving a new problem instance on each day, the EA utilizes historical solutions that perform well on the similar instances to improve initial solution quality and, hence, accelerate convergence. Computational results on real-world instances of vaccine distribution demonstrate that the proposed method can produce solutions with significantly shorter distribution time compared to state-of-the-arts and, hence, contribute to accelerating the achievement of herd immunity.
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The Prediction of Rainfall Extremes Campaign In the Pacific (PRECIP) aims to improve our understanding of extreme rainfall processes in the East Asian summer monsoon. A convection-permitting ensemble-based data assimilation and forecast system (the PSU WRF-EnKF system) was run in real time in the summers of 2020–21 in advance of the 2022 field campaign, assimilating all-sky infrared (IR) radiances from the geostationary Himawari-8 and GOES-16 satellites, and providing 48-h ensemble forecasts every day for weather briefings and discussions. This is the first time that all-sky IR data assimilation has been performed in a real-time forecast system at a convection-permitting resolution for several seasons. Compared with retrospective forecasts that exclude all-sky IR radiances, rainfall predictions are statistically significantly improved out to at least 4–6 h for the real-time forecasts, which is comparable to the time scale of improvements gained from assimilating observations from the dense ground-based Doppler weather radars. The assimilation of all-sky IR radiances also reduced the forecast errors of large-scale environments and helped to maintain a more reasonable ensemble spread compared with the counterpart experiments that did not assimilate all-sky IR radiances. The results indicate strong potential for improving routine short-term quantitative precipitation forecasts using these high-spatiotemporal-resolution satellite observations in the future.Significance StatementDuring the summers of 2020/21, the PSU WRF-EnKF data assimilation and forecast system was run in real time in advance of the 2022 Prediction of Rainfall Extremes Campaign In the Pacific (PRECIP), assimilating all-sky (clear-sky and cloudy) infrared radiances from geostationary satellites into a numerical weather prediction model and providing ensemble forecasts. This study presents the first-of-its-kind systematic evaluation of the impacts of assimilating all-sky infrared radiances on short-term qualitative precipitation forecasts using multiyear, multiregion, real-time ensemble forecasts. Results suggest that rainfall forecasts are improved out to at least 4–6 h with the assimilation of all-sky infrared radiances, comparable to the influence of assimilating radar observations, with benefits in forecasting large-scale environments and representing atmospheric uncertainties as well.
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Presentations spanned a range of applications: the public health impacts of poor air quality and environmental justice;greenhouse gas measuring, monitoring, reporting, and verification (GHG MMRV);stratospheric ozone monitoring;and various applications of satellite observations to improve models, including data assimilation in global Earth system models. The combination of methane (CH4), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), and NO2 retrievals can improve confidence in emissions inventories and model performance, and together these data products would be of use in future air quality management tools. The ability to retrieve additional trace gases (e.g., ethane, isoprene, and ammonia) in the thermal IR along with those measured in the UV–Vis–NIR region would be extremely useful for air quality applications, including source apportionment analysis (e.g., for oil/natural gas extraction, biogenic, and agricultural sources). Ground-level ozone is one of six criteria pollutants for which the EPA sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect against human health and welfare effects.
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PurposeCarbon trading mechanism has been adopted to foster the green transformation of the economy on a global scale, but its effectiveness for the power industry remains controversial. Given that energy-related greenhouse gas emissions account for most of all anthropogenic emissions, this paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of this trading mechanism at the plant level to support relevant decision-making and mechanism design.Design/methodology/approachThis paper constructs a novel spatiotemporal data set by matching satellite-based high-resolution (1 × 1 km) CO2 and PM2.5 emission data with accurate geolocation of power plants. It then applies a difference-in-differences model to analyse the impact of carbon trading mechanism on emission reduction for the power industry in China from 2007 to 2016.FindingsResults suggest that the carbon trading mechanism induces 2.7% of CO2 emission reduction and 6.7% of PM2.5 emission reduction in power plants in pilot areas on average. However, the reduction effect is significant only in coal-fired power plants but not in gas-fired power plants. Besides, the reduction effect is significant for power plants operated with different technologies and is more pronounced for those with outdated production technology, indicating the strong potential for green development of backward power plants. The reduction effect is also more intense for power plants without affiliation relationships than those affiliated with particular manufacturers.Originality/valueThis paper identifies the causal relationship between the carbon trading mechanism and emission reduction in the power industry by providing an innovative methodology for identifying plant-level emissions based on high-resolution satellite data, which has been practically absent in previous studies. It serves as a reference for stakeholders involved in detailed policy formulation and execution, including policymakers, power plant managers and green investors.
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The radiative effects of the large‐scale air traffic slowdown during April and May 2020 due to the international response to the COVID‐19 pandemic are estimated by comparing the coverage (CC), optical properties, and radiative forcing of persistent linear contrails over the conterminous United States and two surrounding oceanic air corridors during the slowdown period and a similar baseline period during 2018 and 2019 when air traffic was unrestricted. The detected CC during the slowdown period decreased by an area‐averaged mean of 41% for the three analysis boxes. The retrieved contrail optical properties were mostly similar for both periods. Total shortwave contrail radiative forcings (CRFs) during the slowdown were 34% and 42% smaller for Terra and Aqua, respectively. The corresponding differences for longwave CRF were 33% for Terra and 40% for Aqua. To account for the impact of any changes in the atmospheric environment between baseline and slowdown periods on detected CC amounts, the contrail formation potential (CFP) was computed from reanalysis data. In addition, a filtered CFP (fCFP) was also developed to account for factors that may affect contrail formation and visibility of persistent contrails in satellite imagery. The CFP and fCFP were combined with air traffic data to create empirical models that estimated CC during the baseline and slowdown periods and were compared to the detected CC. The models confirm that decreases in CC and radiative forcing during the slowdown period were mostly due to the reduction in air traffic, and partly due to environmental changes.Alternate :Plain Language SummaryContrails produced by aircraft flying in cold but humid air both warm the atmosphere by reducing infrared radiation emitted back into space and cool it by increasing reflected sunlight. Due to the decrease in air traffic during the first months of the COVID pandemic, fewer satellite‐detectable contrails were produced compared to pre‐pandemic times, and thus the radiative effects of contrails were also diminished. But changes in the overall temperature and humidity at aircraft cruise altitudes also affect contrail formation and might explain at least some of the observed decrease in contrail coverage during April and May 2020. Analysis of satellite imagery showed that the thickness and ice‐crystal size of the contrails during the COVID period did not change much from pre‐pandemic contrails. The regional contrail coverage was accurately simulated from a combination of the estimated air traffic activity at cruise altitude and the probable frequency of when atmospheric conditions were favorable for contrail formation. This simulation confirms that most of the decrease in contrails and their radiative effects during the COVID‐related slowdown period were due to the reduction in air traffic, and to a lesser extent to changes in temperature and humidity at cruise altitude during April and May 2020.
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Air pollution causes respiratory ailments and drives climate change. Air quality is driven by emissions from various sources, weather patterns, and transport of pollutants. Satellite analysis of pollutants in the atmosphere can provide temporally consistent and spatially wide measurements. In this study, the monthly concentrations of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Sulfur Dioxide (SO2), Carbon Monoxide (CO), and Ozone (O3) from the Sentinel-5 Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) were analyzed in four major cities in the Philippines, representing different climate types. Satellite-based measurements of land surface temperature and rainfall were used to investigate meteorological effects to air pollutants. Seasonal patterns were observed in the time series of NO2, O3 and CO alongside rainfall and LST. During the dry season, high LST and low precipitation is observed to be associated with increase in NO2, O3, and CO concentrations. On the other hand, wet seasons show decreases in concentrations of air pollutants, consistent with the washout effect. The NO2 average concentration in NCR is 1.9, 2.1, 2.3 times higher than in Metro Cebu, Davao City, and Legazpi City, respectively. In contrast, SO2 average concentration is highest in Legazpi City due to the nearby active volcano by a maximum factor of 1.8 compared to other cities. In addition, air quality changes brought about by community quarantines were examined since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. Transition from the pre-quarantine period to the first lockdown shows sudden decrease by 28% in satellite-based retrievals of NO2 in NCR, mainly due to reduced anthropogenic emissions. As tiers of community quarantines were introduced, an increase in pollutant concentrations was observed, returning to pre-pandemic air quality as the guidelines ease physical and economic restrictions. Monitoring and analyzing the patterns in concentration of air pollutants in relation to meteorological and anthropogenic drivers can help in the air quality management in the country. © 43rd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, ACRS 2022.
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The Malaysian government implemented the Movement Control Order (MCO) from March 18 to May 13, 2020, in an effort to curb the coronavirus disease outbreak that had spread throughout the nation. Utilizing data from GOSAT, GOSAT-2, OCO-2, OCO-3, and TROPOMI, the total column-averaged dry-air mole fraction of carbon dioxide and methane (referred as XCO2 and XCH4) is employed to examine the patterns of both gases throughout the MCO as well as from the same period the prior and following year. The Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation method is utilized in mapping the XCO2 and XCH4 for the industrial areas in Peninsular Malaysia. The results revealed that even MCO is implemented, the XCO2 and XCH4 in the industrial areas are increasing year by year. By using satellites data, the XCO2 and XCH4 from large areas can be monitored continuously.
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Winarni NL, Anugra BG, Anisafitri S, Kaunain NN, Pradana DH. 2021. Fieldwork during pandemic: Backyard bird survey and making student’s biological field practice works. Biodiversitas 22: 1887-1894. The COVID-19 pandemic situations had forced universities to shutdown face-to-face lectures and change it to online teaching. This change had brought significant challenges to biological courses which need field practice in their syllabus and therefore field practice should be adjusted and innovative. During November-December 2020, we compared students' field practice from the Ornithology class to urban bird survey to evaluate whether the data collected by students can contribute to citizen science as well as to enhance field practice during online courses. We used point count methods to survey bird communities in urban environment in Jakarta and its satellite cities. We found that the students tended to observe the most abundant birds such as the cave swiftlet and Eurasian tree sparrow and missed unfamiliar species which were smaller-sized birds that use aerial and upper canopy. It was suggested that the data from field practice can also support citizen science when prioritized to common, abundance species. In addition, best practices for field practice were provided, emphasizing the independent field practice incorporating technology in which the results were communicated to the students. Hence, strengthening field practice for biological courses is important to support biodiversity conservation research and activities.
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To conduct a preliminary evaluation of a university food pantry using implementation science (IS) metrics.Food insecure students at a Midwest university during Fall 2020.Previous research has identified a need for IS to be incorporated into nutrition interventions to better address program sustainability at community and institutional levels.A satellite campus food pantry was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and is located at the university's recreation center. This food assistance program provides free food for students in need and was open 3 hours a day, twice a week from August to December.Pantry staff tracked implementation costs, food waste, and student usage. Pantry clients were invited to take an anonymous online survey to assess their satisfaction and acceptability of the pantry using valid and reliable questionnaires.In 28 service days, there were 353 visits with a total of 475 people served, and 150 different student users. The majority (n = 113, 75.3%) only visited the pantry once or twice, while 24.7% (n = 37) visited the pantry at least once a month. Of students relying on the pantry for monthly visits, only 27% were affected by COVID-19. Thus far, 97% of implementation costs are attributed to staff pay. The majority of landfilled food waste (591.4 pounds) was produce (15.8% fruit, 49.9% vegetables) and 18.2% was from premade items like sandwiches, salads, and pastas. Average student satisfaction (n = 45) was 27.3 out of 30 and acceptability was 13.7 out of 16.The pantry is well accepted by students and results suggest it may be needed beyond pandemic times with limited users being affected by COVID-19. Additionally, while advantageous that the pantry receives premade food from other campus programs, more research is needed to determine if the pantry is the best option for redistributing these food items.
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The South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB), which includes the city of Los Angeles and is home to more than 15 million people, frequently experiences ozone (O3) levels that exceed ambient air quality standards. While strict regulation of O3 precursors has dramatically improved air quality over the past 50 years, the region has seen limited improvement in O3 over the past decade despite continued reductions in precursor emissions. One contributing factor to the recent lack of improvement is a gradual transition of the underlying photochemical environment from a VOC-limited regime (where VOC denotes volatile organic compound) towards an NOx-limited one. The changes in human activity prompted by COVID-19-related precautions in spring and summer of 2020 exacerbated these existing changes in the O3 precursor environment. Analyses of sector-wide changes in activity indicate that emissions of NOx decreased by 15 %–20 % during spring (April–May) and by 5 %–10 % during summer (June–July) relative to expected emissions for 2020, largely due to changes in mobile-source activity. Historical trend analysis from two indicators of O3 sensitivity (the satellite HCHO/NO2 ratio and the O3 weekend/weekday ratio) revealed that spring of 2020 was the first year on record to be on averageNOx-limited, while the “transitional” character of recent summers became NOx-limited due to COVID-19-related NOx reductions in 2020. Model simulations performed with baseline and COVID-19-adjusted emissions capture this change to an NOx-limited environment and suggest that COVID-19-related emission reductions were responsible for a 0–2 ppb decrease in O3 over the study period. Reaching NOx-limited territory is an important regulatory milestone, and this study suggests that deep reductions in NOx emissions (in excess of those observed in this study) would be an effective pathway toward long-term O3 reductions.
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The global expansion of urbanization is posing associated environmental and socioeconomic challenges. The capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, is also facing similar threats. The development of urban green infrastructures (UGIs) are the forefront mechanisms in mitigating these global challenges. Nevertheless, UGIs in Addis Ababa are degrading and inaccessible to the city residents. Hence, a 56 km long Addis River Side Green Development Project is under development with a total investment of USD 1.253 billion funded by Chinese government aid. In phase one of this grand project, Friendship Square Park (FSP), was established in 2019 with a total cost of about USD 50 million. This paper was initiated to describe the establishment process of FSP and assess its social, economic, and environmental contributions to the city. The establishment process was described in close collaboration with the FSP contractor, China Communications Construction Company, Ltd. (CCCC). The land use changes of FSP’s development were determined by satellite images, while its environmental benefits were assessed through plant selection, planting design, and seedling survival rate. Open and/or close ended questionnaires were designed to assess the socioeconomic values of the park. The green space of the area has highly changed from 2002 (8.6%) to 2019 (56.1%) when the park was completed. More than 74,288 seedlings in 133 species of seedlings were planted in the park. The average survival rate of these seedlings was 93%. On average about 500 people visit the park per day, and 400,000 USD is generated, just from the entrance fee, per annum. Overall, 100% of the visitors were strongly satisfied with the current status of the park and recommended some additional features to be included in it. In general, the park is contributing to the environmental and socioeconomic values of the city residents, and this kind of park should be developed in other sub-cities of the city as well as regional cities of Ethiopia to increase the aesthetic, environmental and socioeconomic values of the country, at large.
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Since the outbreak of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict on 24 February 2022, Ukraine’s economy, society, and cities have been devastated and struck on multiple fronts, with large numbers of refugees fleeing to neighboring countries. The lighting systems in Ukrainian cities have been severely restricted due to Russian missile bombing and curfew policies. The power shortages adversely affected the livelihoods of the Ukrainian residents dramatically. For a timely assessment of the power shortages’ extent and the affected population in Ukraine, this study tracked the dynamics of nighttime light emissions in Ukraine based on the newly developed daily Black Marble product (VNP46A2) from NASA. The results show that the average light radiance in Ukrainian urban areas has decreased by about 37% since the eruption of the war, with Kiev city being the most dramatic region, having a post-conflict decrease of about 51%. In addition, by introducing near-real-time population data, we have implemented a survey of the affected population in Ukraine suffering from war-induced power shortages. Estimates show that about 17.3 million Ukrainian residents were affected by power shortages. In more detail, the number of children under 10 years old was about 2.35 million (about 5.24% of the total population), while the number of elderly people over 60 years old was about 3.53 million (about 7.86% of the total population). Generally, the results of this study could contribute positively to the timely assessment of the impact of the conflict and the implementation of humanitarian relief.
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Despite the rapid and continuous development of communication and networking technologies, the goal of universal connectivity (i.e., the ability to communicate with any user at any time and in any place) is still unrealized. In 2019, a study [1] found that 40% of Earth's regions lack network coverage, which means that there are still 4 billion people on the planet without Internet access. Moreover, even as the COVID-19 pandemic increased the need for online working, learning, and accessing services-and, thus, increased the number of Internet users-2.9 billion people remain offline in developing countries [2]. Satellite communications (SatCom) have been emerging as a potential and indispensable solution to extending broadband coverage to underserved areas [2]. © 2000-2012 IEEE.
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This study investigated the spatiotemporal variabilities in nitrogen dioxide (NO2), formaldehyde (HCHO), ozone (O3), and light-absorbing aerosols within the Greater Tokyo Area, Japan, which is the most populous metropolitan area in the world. The analysis is based on total tropospheric column, partial tropospheric column (within the boundary layer), and in situ observations retrieved from multiple platforms as well as additional information obtained from reanalysis and box model simulations. This study mainly covers the 2013–2020 period, focusing on 2020 when air quality was influenced by the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Although total and partial tropospheric NO2 columns were reduced by an average of about 10 % in 2020, reductions exceeding 40 % occurred in some areas during the pandemic state of emergency. Light-absorbing aerosol levels within the boundary layer were also reduced for most of 2020, while smaller fluctuations in HCHO and O3 were observed. The significantly enhanced degree of weekly cycling of NO2, HCHO, and light-absorbing aerosol found in urban areas during 2020 suggests that, in contrast to other countries, mobility in Japan also dropped on weekends. We conclude that, despite the lack of strict mobility restrictions in Japan, widespread adherence to recommendations designed to limit the COVID-19 spread resulted in unique air quality improvements.
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We present a low‐altitude satellite survey of power line harmonic radiation (PLHR) at 50 Hz over Mainland China. We analyzed the month‐to‐month variation pattern in PLHR occurrence rate and further analyzed its correlation with some influencing factors (i.e., solar radiation, lightning flashes, and electricity consumption) using CSES satellite electric field data from 2019 to 2021. We also investigate the response of PLHR occurrence rate to COVID‐19. The statistical results show the dayside PLHR occurrence rate decreasing from winter to summer solstice and increasing from summer to winter solstice, which indicates it is controlled by the solar radiation. The nightside variation is more complex, which may be due to many sources that could influence the nightside lower ionosphere. The PLHR occurrence rate significantly decreased over Mainland China in February 2020, which is because of the significant decrease in electricity consumption due to the suspension of industrial production caused by COVID‐19.Alternate :Plain Language SummaryPower line harmonic radiation (PLHR) is the electromagnetic waves radiated by electric power systems at harmonic frequencies of 50 or 60 Hz, depending on the frequency of the system on the ground. Previous research mainly focuses on identification of individual PLHR events and their subsequent analysis. However, the number of base‐frequency PLHR signal events is the most abundant, which is suitable for the statistical study of PLHR occurrence rate and its variation pattern, and further study of the factors affecting its variation pattern. In this paper, we use 3 years of electric field data from the China Seismo‐Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES) which is an LEO satellite launched into orbit in February 2018 to investigate the month‐to‐month variation pattern of PLHR occurrence rate over Mainland China and its correlation with the influencing factors. The response of PLHR occurrence rate to COVID‐19 are also investigated.
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In this investigation, an innovative combination of pixel-based change detection technique and object-based change detection technique is explored with the satellite images of Holy Masjid al-Haram, Saudi Arabia. The gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) method is used to quantify the texture of the remote sensing data through the texture classification approach on the satellite data in this work. GLCM produces results of the texture quantification in normalized form. Thus, applying a texture classification scheme on the satellite data is impressive to observe. Later maximum likelihood image classification approach is used for classification purposes. The classified information is categorized into four different classes. The kappa coefficient’s value and the overall accuracy for the pre- COVID classified study area are 0.6532 and 76.38%, respectively. During COVID, the classified study area presents the kappa coefficient and the overall accuracy of 0.7631 and 82.18%, respectively. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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Fast and reliable broadband Internet access is essential, which was emphasized even more during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Still, many locations do not have access to terrestrial broadband Internet access. Satellite communication provides area-wide coverage with high data rates. Europe is served by several geostationary satellites and the new Starlink megaconstellation in low Earth orbit is available since recently. This paper summarizes the findings of our comprehensive study in which we evaluated the performance of different applications over different Internet access technologies, with focus on Internet access via satellite. Four geostationary satellite providers, the Starlink megaconstellation, and two terrestrial access links (DSL and LTE) were selected. Results show that satellite communication provides fast and reliable Internet access. The high latency of geostationary satellite links is problematic for some applications, especially interactive applications and virtual private networks. The Starlink low Earth orbit megaconstellation is able to perform as good as terrestrial Internet access technologies. © VDE VERLAG GMBH ∙ Berlin ∙ Offenbach.All rights reserved.
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Transmission rates of COVID-19 have been associated with the density of buildings where contact among individuals partially contributes to transmission. The research sought to analyze the spatial distribution of building density derived from satellite images and determine its implications to COVID-19 health risk management using Yogyakarta and its surrounding districts as an example. Fine-scale building distribution obtained through remote sensing data transformation was analyzed with GIS. NDBI was applied to Landsat 8 imagery;then, using multiple linear regression analysis, it was correlated to building density’s training samples generated from high-resolution imagery. The derived percent of building density (PBD) was combined with publicly available records of COVID-19 infection to assess risk. This research found that PBD could explain the uneven COVID-19 diffusion at different stages of its development. Instead of dividing regions into zones based on confirmed cases, government and public health officials should observe new cases in high-PBD districts;then, when the cases are decreasing, their attention should shift to low-PBD districts. Remote sensing data allow for moderate-scale PBD mapping and integrating it with confirmed cases produces spatial health risks, determining target areas for interventions and allowing regionally tailored responses to anticipate or prevent the next wave of infections.