Kontoes Charalabos

• PhD
• Research Director at National Observatory of Athens

A total number of 20,212 fire hot spots were recorded by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite instrument over Greece during the period 2002e2013. The Fire Radiative Power (FRP) of these events ranged from 10 up to 6000 MW at 1 km resolution, and many of these fire episodes resulted in long-range transport of smoke ove...

Effective weed management is crucial for improving agricultural productivity, as weeds compete with crops for vital resources like nutrients and water. Accurate maps of weed management methods are essential for policymakers to assess farmer practices, evaluate impacts on vegetation health, biodiversity, and climate, as well as ensure compliance wit...

The widespread use of Exogenous Organic Matter in agriculture necessitates monitoring to assess its effects on soil and crop health. This study evaluates optical Sentinel-2 satellite imagery for detecting digestate application, a practice that enhances soil fertility but poses environmental risks like microplastic contamination and nitrogen losses....

Sustainable agricultural practices have become increasingly important due to growing environmental concerns and the urgent need to mitigate the climate crisis. Digital agriculture, through advanced data analysis frameworks, holds promise for promoting these practices. Pesticides are a common tool in agricultural pest control, which are key in ensur...

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024EGUGA..2612686D/abstract

Landslides are one of the most severe geohazards globally, causing extreme financial and social losses. While InSAR time-series analyses provide valuable insights into landslide detection, mapping, and monitoring, AI is also implemented in a variety of geohazards, including landslides. In the present study, a machine learning (ML) landslide suscept...

Coastal areas are highly dynamic environments, vulnerable to natural processes and human interventions. This study presents the first application of the Integrated Coastal Vulnerability Index (ICVI) in Cyprus, focusing on two major tourism-dependent beaches, Fig Tree Bay and Vrysi Beach, located along the Protaras coastline. Despite their economic...

Monitoring forest health has become essential due to increasing pressures caused by climate change and dust events, particularly in semi-arid regions. This study investigates the impact of dust events on forest vegetation in Paphos forest in Cyprus, which is a semi-arid area prone to frequent dust storms. Using multispectral and radar satellite dat...

As cities have expanded into floodplains, the need for their protection has become crucial, prompting the evolution of flood studies. Here, we describe the operational tools, methods and processes used in flood risk engineering studies in the 1970s, and we evaluate the technological progress up to the present day. To this aim, we reference relevant...

The third campaign for the calibration and intercomparison of solar UV radiometers (UVC III) took place at Davos, Switzerland in June–August 2022. More than 70 radiometers participated in the campaign and measured side-by-side with the portable reference spectroradiometer QASUME. By using inputs from various sources, the UVIOS2 system was used to e...

Yield prediction is an essential task to sustain the food market and to ensure the food for the world in the upcoming decades. Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) are a vital staple food for many countries in the world and the advancement of accurate yield prediction will aid in promoting the agricultural industry. Potato is one of the most exportable...

Coastal risk assessment is crucial for coastal management and decision making, especially in areas already experiencing the negative impacts of climate change. This study aims to investigate the coastal vulnerability due to climate change and human activities in an area west of the Limassol district’s coastline, in Cyprus, on which there have been...

The determination of swelling/shrinking phenomena, from natural and anthropogenic activity, is examined in this study through the synergy of various remote sensing methodologies. For the period of 2016–2022, a time-series InSAR analysis of Sentinel-1 satellite images, with a Coherent Change Detection procedure, was conducted to calculate the Normal...

Extreme precipitation events pose a critical threat nowadays, as they can lead to widespread floods and trigger intense landslide phenomena. Moreover, the resulting extended floods can subsequently cause additional landslide events. This occurs because floods have the potential to significantly alter the landscape of a region, rendering it, in some...

Over the last decade, the use of Machine/Deep learning algorithms and methodologies has found widespread application across various domains in wildfire science, with fire occurrence risk prediction being one of the extensively covered areas. Many lgorithms and architectures have been explored to solve the problem as a binary classification task foc...

Solar irradiance nowcasting and short-term forecasting are important tools for the integration of solar plants into the electricity grid. Understanding the role of clouds and aerosols in those techniques is essential for improving their accuracy. In this study, we introduce improvements in the existing nowcasting and short-term forecasting operatio...

The island of Cyprus is characterised by a complex geological environment as it overlies a boundary zone of three tectonic plates, leading to high seismicity and intensive tectonism. It consists highly of Neogene marls, exhibiting serious geotechnical problems due to their high content of clay minerals. Along with strong, destructive earthquakes, v...

Landslides are natural disasters with a high socio-economic impact on human societies due to the considerable number of fatalities and the destruction of infrastructure that they cause. A comprehensive landslides inventory is vital for reducing this impact as it can be used in landslides susceptibility studies for the identification of the subregio...

The importance of safety in space has been greatly emphasized during the recent years as a result of the continuous technological advancements, leading to the reduction of launch costs, the development of smaller satellites that use Commercial Off-The-Self (COTS) equipment, and the capability to deploy them in constellations. Space Surveillance and...

The number of Resident Space Objects (RSO) in Earth’s orbit has been rising steadily since the first satellite was launched. The need to protect functioning space assets from collisions with space debris is becoming more urgent as the number of debris has increased considerably partly due to a number of anti-satellite weapons tests which have creat...

Cyprus has a long history of destructive tectonic activity and related geohazards. This is mainly due to its location on the Mediterranean fault zone and the interaction of the Eurasian and African plates. To study the occurrence of land displacements on a national scale, various space-based monitoring techniques exploiting the Copernicus program's...

Mosquito-borne diseases have been spreading across Europe over the past two decades, with climate change contributing to this spread. Temperature and precipitation are key factors in a mosquito’s life cycle, and are greatly affected by climate change. Using a machine learning framework, Earth Observation data, and future climate projections of temp...

Turkey due to its location within the collision zone between the Eurasian, African and Arabian Plates, is a region prone to earthquakes. The country mostly lies on the Anatolian micro-plate, bounded by two major strike-slip fault zones, i.e., the North and the East Anatolian Fault. On 6 February 2023, the activation of a large segment of the East A...

The Evros region in Greece is prone to frequent floods, causing significant damage to infrastructure and communities. It is imperative to have an effective flood monitoring system in place to mitigate the risks associated with these natural disasters. Satellite remote sensing technology can provide vital information for monitoring and assessing the...

Forest fires can result in loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and adverse environmental impacts. This study showcases an integrated approach for conducting high-detail fire risk assessment and supporting strategic planning and management of fire events in peri-urban areas that are susceptible to forest fires. The presented methodology encompas...

Citation: Iliopoulos, N.; Chalaris, M.; Solomos, S.; Kontoes, C.; Bartsotas, N.; Malounis, A.; Amiridis, V.; Marinou, E.; Eleftheratos, K.; Mihalopoulos, N.; et al. Smoke Dispersion from Forest Fire Combustion Products-Implementation at Strategic, Tactical and Operational Level. Environ. Sci. Proc. 2023, 26, 189. https://doi. Abstract: An increase...

Earth observation (EO) techniques have significantly evolved over time, covering a wide range of applications in different domains. The scope of this study is to review the research conducted on EO in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa (EMMENA) region and to identify the main knowledge gaps. We searched through the Web of Scie...

The concept of sustainable intensification in agriculture necessitates the implementation of management practices that prioritize sustainability without compromising productivity. However, the effects of such practices are known to depend on environmental conditions, and are therefore expected to change as a result of a changing climate. We study t...

Solar irradiance nowcasting and short-term forecasting are important tools for the integration of solar plants in the grid. Understanding the role of clouds and aerosols in those techniques is essential for improving their accuracy. In this study, we introduce the improvements in the existing nowcasting/short-term forecasting operational systems SE...

Earth Observation (EO) techniques have significantly evolved over time, covering a wide range of applications in different domains. The scope of this study is to review the research conducted on EO in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa (EMMENA) region and to identify the main knowledge gaps. We searched through the Web of Scie...

In contrast to the rapid digitalization of several industries, agriculture suffers from low adoption of smart farming tools. Even though recent advancements in AI-driven digital agriculture can offer high-performing predictive functionalities, they lack tangible quantitative evidence on their benefits to the farmers. Field experiments can derive su...

such a holistic approach for flood risk assessment is implemented on building block level in Greece. Hence, taking into consideration the regional scale and the high spatial resolution in hydrologic and hydraulic models and flood hazards maps, detailed field visits are conducted following a specific methodology. Specifically, cross section measurem...

A reliable road network is a vital local asset, connecting communities and unlocking economic growth. Every year landslides cause serious damage and, in some cases, the full disruption of many road networks, which can last from a few days to even months. The identification and monitoring of landslides with conventional methods on an extended and co...

Crop phenology is crucial information for crop yield estimation and agricultural management. Traditionally, phenology has been observed from the ground; however Earth observation, weather and soil data have been used to capture the physiological growth of crops. In this work, we propose a new approach for the within-season phenology estimation for...

The objective of the present study is to extract information about the displacement field in the central part of Chalkidiki peninsula, an area poorly investigated by means of SAR interferometry. InSAR time-series analysis was performed on datasets from ERS-2 and Sentinel-1 SAR sensors. Validation was provided by GPS observations near Polygyros city...

In contrast to the rapid digitalization of several industries, agriculture suffers from low adoption of smart farming tools. While AI-driven digital agriculture tools can offer high-performing predictive functionalities, they lack tangible quantitative evidence on their benefits to the farmers. Field experiments can derive such evidence, but are of...

Crop phenology is crucial information for crop yield estimation and agricultural management. Traditionally, phenology has been observed from the ground; however Earth observation, weather and soil data have been used to capture the physiological growth of crops. In this work, we propose a new approach for the within-season phenology estimation for...

Crop classification is an important remote sensing task with many applications, e.g., food security monitoring, ecosystem service mapping, climate change impact assessment, etc. This work focuses on mapping 10 crop types at the field level in an agricultural region located in the Spanish province of Navarre. For this, multi-temporal Synthetic Apert...

The continuous increase in global population and the impact of climate change on crop production are expected to affect the food sector significantly. In this context, there is need for timely, large-scale and precise mapping of crops for evidence-based decision making. A key enabler towards this direction are new satellite missions that freely off...

To fight climate change and accommodate the increasing population, global crop production has to be strengthened. To achieve the "sustainable intensification" of agriculture, transforming it from carbon emitter to carbon sink is a priority, and understanding the environmental impact of agricultural management practices is a fundamental prerequisite...

In contrast to the rapid digitalization of several industries, agriculture suffers from low adoption of climate-smart farming tools. Even though AI-driven digital agriculture can offer high-performing predictive functionalities, it lacks tangible quantitative evidence on its benefits to the farmers. Field experiments can derive such evidence, but a...

The total agricultural area of Cyprus is about 15% of the total land area ( > 75% as arable farming), setting as a national concern the contamination of groundwater and surface water by the applied agricultural chemicals, which are indispensable in modern agriculture. Agricultural runoff is one of the major sources of nonpoint source pollution. Mor...

The modernization of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) requires the large scale and frequent monitoring of agricultural land. Towards this direction, the free and open satellite data (i.e., Sentinel missions) have been extensively used as the sources for the required high spatial and temporal resolution Earth observations. Nevertheless, monitori...

Helicoverpa Armigera, or cotton bollworm, is a serious insect pest of cotton crops that threatens the yield and the quality of lint. The timely knowledge of the presence of the insects in the field is crucial for effective farm interventions. Meteo-climatic and vegetation conditions have been identified as key drivers of crop pest abundance. In thi...

The recent advances in machine learning and the availability of free and open big Earth data (e.g., Sentinel missions), which cover large areas with high spatial and temporal resolution, have enabled many agriculture monitoring applications. One example is the control of subsidy allocations of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Advanced remote s...

Understanding the suitability of agricultural land for applying specific management practices is of great importance for sustainable and resilient agriculture against climate change. Recent developments in the field of causal machine learning enable the estimation of intervention impacts on an outcome of interest, for samples described by a set of...

Default aerosol extinction coefficient profiles are commonly used instead of measured profiles in radiative transfer modeling, increasing the uncertainties in the simulations. The present study aimed to determine the magnitude of these uncertainties and contribute towards the understanding of the complex interactions between aerosols and solar radi...

Default aerosol extinction coefficient profiles are commonly used instead of measured profiles in radiative transfer modelling, increasing the uncertainties in the simulations. The present study aims to determine the magnitude of these uncertainties and contribute towards the understanding of the complex interactions between aerosols and solar radi...

Recently, massive amounts of satellite images are becoming available. The automated and efficient management, knowledge extraction and visualisation of these big earth data can enable the timely and comprehensive decision making in a number of operational scenarios. In this work, we demonstrate DataCAP that combines the Open Data Cube (ODC) technol...

O período entre 2018 e 2022 mostrou-nos que o problema dos incêndios à escala global não está a diminuir, antes pelo contrário. Parece que as consequências das alterações climáticas já estão a afectar a ocorrência de incêndios florestais em várias partes do Mundo, de uma forma que só esperaríamos que acontecesse vários anos mais tarde. Em muitos pa...

In this paper, we handle the problem of next day wildfire prediction via the use of machine learning. In contrast to most works in the relevant literature, we set the problem to its realistic basis, with respect to its large scale, the extreme imbalance in the data distribution, the required high spatial granularity of the predictions and the consi...

In the framework of the EuroGEO e-shape project (http://www.e-shape.eu/) we introduce the pilot system nextSENSE, which is capable of short-term forecasting the surface solar radiation (SSR) and the subsequent energy production by the photovoltaic solar power plants in Europe and North Africa. This system was developed by the National Observatory o...

This study introduces an Earth observation (EO)-based system which is capable of operationally estimating and continuously monitoring the ultraviolet index (UVI) in Europe. UVIOS (i.e., UV-Index Operating System) exploits a synergy of radiative transfer models with high-performance computing and EO data from satellites (Meteosat Second Generation a...

Effective and efficient control of the agrarian obligations imposed by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the high-level decision making for national and global food security, requires systematic and timely monitoring of the agricultural land. In this study we focus on rice paddy monitoring in South Korea to ultimately deliver food security r...

Mosquito-Borne Diseases (MBDs) are known to be more prevalent in the tropics, and yet, in the last two decades, they are spreading to many other countries, especially in Europe. The set (volume) of environmental, meteorological and other spatio-temporally variable parameters affecting mosquito abundance makes the modeling and prediction tasks quite...

Cyprus plans to drastically increase the share of renewable energy sources from 13.9% in 2020 to 22.9% in 2030. Solar energy can play a key role in the effort to fulfil this goal. The potential for production of solar energy over the island is much higher than most of European territory because of the low latitude of the island and the nearly cloud...

Forest fires cause severe damages in ecosystems, human lives and infrastructure globally. This situation tends to get worse in the next decades due to climate change and the expected increase in the length and severity of the fire season. Thus, the ability to develop a method that reliably models the risk of fire occurrence is an important step tow...

Cyprus plans to drastically increase the share of renewable energy sources from 13.9% in 2020 to 22.9% in 2030. Solar energy can play a key role in the effort to fulfil this goal. The potential for production of solar energy over the island is much higher than most of European territory because of the low latitude of the island and the nearly cloud...