The familiar definition “Samara is a space capital” is much closer to everyone than we can imagine. Space is relevant not only to those who are somehow engaged in production in the space industry or scientific research. We ask for help from outer space every time we look for information on arrival of public transport or plot a route to a new location. Satellites do not spy on everyone, but daily monitor the order, checking the condition of our forests and fields, whether quarries have uncontrollably increased, and whether the developer violates boundaries of the plots. KP-Samara talked to Andrey Chernov, a scientist from Samara University, and found out how townspeople’s lives are connected with outer space.

Digital models of cities

Samara’s IT community has something to be proud of, especially in the field of geoinformatics. Over the past 20 years, many interesting projects have been implemented: for example, “digital profiles” of most of the buildings in the Samara Region have been created. Now, some theories can be tested in the form of a computer model, with studying weak points and only then laying new roads or changing transport routes. Samara University has extensive experience in creating geoinformation models and processing satellite images.

“Samara developers have made good progress in the Earth remote sensing, applied mathematics and informatics, establishing geoinformation systems”, told us Andrey Chernov, Associate Professor at the Department of Geoinformatics and Information Security.

Three types of information from outer space

According to the scientist, there are three main areas of using satellite images for civilian applications. The first and greatest benefit that satellite groupings bring is space communications, which provides steady access to the Internet from anywhere in the world.

Another application of space technology in the life of an average resident of Samara is navigation systems such as GLONASS and GPS. Every time a citizen opens the Arrival app on his/her phone to see when a bus or a tram comes, he/she actually turns for help to satellites flying somewhere high above the Earth. The same thing happens when the phone detects its position, for offering its owner the nearest cafe or delivery from the store. For precise geolocation, it uses data from orbit.

The third is satellite images, which show all our houses, fields and forests. But there is no need for worrying that satellites maliciously film us at bad angles or watch to control all our movements. Five to ten years ago, main consumers of the images were people, and now — artificial intelligence algorithms. Satellites take pictures of the planet’s surface, and AI analyses the data. Lately, algorithms study images faster and more efficiently than human eyes would have done.

In other words, the process of observing from outer space is not often similar to what we can see in spy movies. Such detailed images, where you can see cars and sometimes people, are rarely taken by satellites: as a rule, large settlements are covered once or twice a year, and the rest of the territory — once every 1–5 years. But smaller-scale low-detailed shots are taken by satellite cameras once a week or even daily, depending on importance of a particular territory. After that, AI looks for inconsistencies and, if it notes something to have been changed, gives a signal to the human. Then specialists of relevant control and supervision services go to the site and sort it out in full.

What are the satellites watching?

The main task of satellites is to track changes in using arable land, forests, monitor the use of reservoirs, work on quarries and construction sites.

Samara scientists use this block of information in the “Robot Cartographer” and the integrated monitoring system for the region. The robot studies issues of urbanism and urban planning, development of natural resources and agriculture, cartography and navigation, transport and natural-disaster monitoring. The system monitors dynamic changes and warns if it finds inconsistencies. It will inform if the quarry has gone beyond its borders, someone has plowed meadows or, conversely, have not been in the field, though received a subsidy for agricultural work.

“Previously, inspectors just went and watched how things were”, says Andrey Chernov. “Observing from outer space allows conducting more mass inspections. Depending on the area, from 70 % to 95 % of all violations found by the satellite are confirmed, but the final decision is made by the human. For example, in 2023, in this way, more than 70 million rubles of additional taxes were received from found and registered real estate items in the budget of cities and regions.”

Source: samara.kp.ru