A new initiative of the Universidad de Concepción, UdeC, responds to a technological scientific challenge posed by the Aerial Photogrammetric Service of the Chilean Air Force that seeks to develop a tool for the management of socio-natural emergencies in Chile such as lahars, floods and volcanic eruptions, for example.   

This is 'Development of an integrated platform for the automated processing of geospatial data, and for the evaluation and immediate communication of the impact of socio-natural phenomena', a project led by Dr. José Luis Palma Lizana of the Department of Earth Sciences of the Faculty of Chemical Sciences of the UdeC.    

The proposal will have the institutional support of the Observatory of Environmental Risks, also directed by Dr. Palma, and of the Center for Research in Mathematical Engineering, CI²MA, from where it is expected, explains the geoscientist, "they will advise us in numerical analysis of large volumes of data, as well as in the implementation of mathematical models in computational clusters for the work we will do with satellite images; probably, we will need machine learning methods in large volumes of data, considering that the results must be available in a limited time".   

In the same sense, Dr. Rodolfo Araya Durán, director of CI²MA, affirms that this collaboration represents "the opportunity to prove that our scientific development can help the country in concrete problems. This will be of vital importance for how society sees us and also to attract new students".   

"The challenges are great: to have a look that is interested in real-time simulations, the handling of large volumes of data, their interpretation and the development of physical models, and their numerical implementation, according to the needs of the air force, among others", adds the also academic of the Department of Mathematical Engineering of the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the UdeC and researcher of the Center for Mathematical Modeling of the U. de Chile, who has already been collaborating for some time with colleagues in the area of geoscience, especially in his capacity as alternate director of the PRECURSOR Group Project.