The BigDataEurope project aims to integrate big data, software, and communities to address societal challenges in Europe. The EU SatCen is building a Secure Societies community, eliciting big data requirements, and implementing a Space and Security pilot for the project. The Secure Societies pilot uses Sentinel-1 satellite imagery, Twitter data, and Reuters news articles to detect changes and events. The change detection workflow analyzes Sentinel-1 imagery to detect areas with changes, while the event detection workflow monitors news and social media to cluster events and verify locations. The pilot is being optimized to improve scalability, add cybersecurity mechanisms, and enhance visualization tools.

1. THE SECURE SOCIETIES
COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES
4th BDE Hangout “Big Data for Secure Societies”4 May 2017
Sergio Albani, EU SatCen
Responsible for RTDI

2. The BigDataEurope Project
 Integrating Big Data, software & communities
for addressing Europe’s Societal Challenges
 BigDataEurope main activities
o Gathering user requirements
o Developing a Big Data platform
o Implementing relevant pilots
 SatCen is
o Building a Secure Societies community
o Eliciting Big Data user requirements
o Implementing a Space and Security pilot

3. Main Community Building activities
 Dialogue with key stakeholders
 BigDataEurope webinars and hangouts
 Presentations at international events
 Big Data in Secure Societies workshops
Stakeholders Interviews Big Data in Secure Societies Workshops
2017 Big Data from Space Conference

4. BDSS Workshops
 BDSS’15 - 30/09/2015 Brussels
o 45 participants from EC, EDA,
EUROPOL, Frontex, ESA, DLR, CDTI,
ASD-EUROSPACE, EARSC and a
number of other entities
 BDSS’16 - 18/10/2016 Brussels
o 59 participants from EC, EDA, Frontex,
ESA, GEO, CDTI, EARSC and a number
of key stakeholders
 BDSS’17 - Autumn 2017 Brussels

5. Aims of the 3rd BDSS Workshop
 Go into Big Data needs and challenges in Secure Societies
 Contribute to the building of a community sharing Big Data
requirements
 Discuss real user scenarios and use cases
 Present and have feedback on the BDE pilot for Secure Societies
 Offer the opportunity to participate in the BDE project
https://www.big-data-europe.eu/bigdataeurope-second-
workshop-on-big-data-in-secure-societies-outcome/

6. THE SECURE SOCIETIES
PILOT
4th BDE Hangout “Big Data for Secure Societies”4 May 2017
Michele Lazzarini, EU SatCen
RTDI Project Officer

7. Pilot General Description
Remote Sensing Big Data Platform Social Sensing
Change Detection Workflow
Event Detection Workflow

8. Pilot Data
 Sentinel-1
o Sen-1A launched in 2014, Sen-1B launched in 2016
o C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (day and night)
o Revisiting Time of 6 days (in interferometric conditions)
o Ground resolution of 5 x 20 m
o Level-1 Ground Range Detected images
 Twitter
o Free Twitter Public Streams API and specific user accounts
o Plain text along with metadata in JSON format
 Reuters
o News articles through RSS feeds in XML format

9. Change Detection Workflow
 Area of Interest and dates range are set in the GUI
 Sentinel-1images are downloaded from the Sentinel
Scientific Data Hub
 Pre-processing operations based on SNAP* are
performed to prepare the data for the processing step
 A change detection algorithm (in house tool) is applied to
detect areas with changes
 Output maps are then associated with social media and
news items and presented to the end-user for cross-
validation
*http://step.esa.int/main/toolboxes/snap/

10. Event Detection Workflow
 News (Reuters) and social media (Twitter accounts) sources
are monitored
 Items from specific news sources might be clustered into
events (based on topic clustering) or searched via
keywords
 Locations in the news items as well as in tweets and events
can be determined
 News location and contents from the detected events
could be verified with satellite images from the Change
Detection Workflow

11. Pilot Second Phase Update
 Change Detection
o Further SNAP modules (e.g. Subset) have been adapted to SPARK
o Integration of the Pixel Aggregator module (DBScan) into the workflow
o Optimized scalability of existing Spark-based Sentinel-1 operators
 Event Detection
o Dockerized SPARK version of the workflow
o Added the possibility to search for keywords through a Twitter Search API
 Whole Pilot
o Cybersecurity mechanisms added (e.g. authentication/authorization)
o Improvement of Sextant functionalities (e.g. information on selected images)

12. UNCLASSIFIED / FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
European Union Satellite Centre © 2017