Change Detection in Rural Localities for Semi-Automated Border Surveillance Applied to Insecure Areas in Lake Chad Basin

Challenge Description

Some borderlands in Sahel countries are insecure due to the presence of armed groups, which makes the field deployment of Customs resources complex. The aim of this challenge is to explore the possibilities to implement semi-automated border surveillance by detecting potential areas favoring smuggling activities.

The World Customs Organization (WCO), established in 1952 as the Customs Co-operation Council (CCC), is an independent intergovernmental body whose mission is to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of Customs administrations. 

Today, the WCO represents 183 Customs administrations across the globe that collectively process approximately 98% of world trade. As the global center of Customs expertise, the WCO is the only international organization with competence in Customs matters and can rightly call itself the voice of the international Customs community.

The goal of the Challenge is to make the border surveillance semi-automated, by detecting changes in rural localities that may evidence a suspicious economic development, using change detection maps from Sentinel-1 images acquired in IW Mode at 10m and 5m. One data pipeline was defined under this challenge.

Results

The results below are divided into Software Repositories, Online Services and Data Products Repositories.
In case you would like to get in touch with us about specific results, please use the indicated reference codes (e.g. WFP-01-01-01).

Software Repositories

There are two categories of software repositories generated for the Challenge:

• GitLab repositories are hosting the reference software code, for use by the team members of a challenge only (restricted access)
• GitHub repositories are hosting the public software code (mirrors), for engagement and collaborative work with the broad community of software developers (public access)

Follow the links below to proceed to one or the other, and find an "Ellip Workflows (ewf)" software application implementing a data processing function.
You can adapt this software to your own context, commit a contribution to the related repository, or engage with the BETTER consortium to run it for a specific purpose (new area of interest, ...) by requesting Cloud resources to support (at) terradue.com

Data Processing as-a-Service

There are two categories of "Data Processing as-a-Service" application packages created for the Data Challenge:

• Data Processing Pipelines are controlling full EO data production campaigns, for use by approved members of a challenge only (authorized access),
• On-demand Processing Services are controlling individual EO data processing jobs, also for use by the approved members of a challenge only (authorized access).

Follow the links below to proceed to one or the other, via a dedicated Geobrowser application providing web access to one or the other of the Data Processing services.
You can engage with the BETTER consortium to request authorized access via support (at) terradue.com

Data Product Repositories

There is a dedicated client App publicly available for the visualization of the data products resulting from EO data processing challenges.

The results can consist of:

• Validation data: small amount of data products generated for approval by the Challenge promoter
• Production campaign data: full-time series/collection of data products answering the Challenge promoter question about Earth Observation data being used to help solve global societal challenges