Progress report

Politecnico di Torino conducted a capacity building exercise to students of the ADDA (The African Drone and Data Academy). As part of the capacity building exercise, Politecnico di Torino  conducted a training session on the use of AGISOFT METASHAPE software for drone imagery processing, setting up of ground control points to enhance the accuracy levels of the acquired drone imagery, as well as support ADDA with the structural development of their academic curricula most especially around drone imagery acquisition/processing. Activities have been also carried outside the class, with the acquisition of GCPs, the flight plan design and execution, both with fixed wing and multirotor UAV.

AMAZON colleagues hosted a session where they trained on how to use the Snowball edge computers to batch process drone imageries. The team is still in touch with the Amazon colleagues to provide technical support as we run along with the use of their equipment.

Another capacity building workshop has been organized with partners from the Academia (Malawi University of Science and Technology, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, MZUZU University) as well as 4 colleagues from DODMA (Department of Disaster Management Affairs), COPI (Cooperazione Internazionale) and with the UNICEF staff. The outcome of the capacity building exercise was quite satisfactory as it was a good learning experience for all parties involved in the exercise. Colleagues from the academia, ADDA, DODMA and expressed satisfaction with the exercise and even requested for more of similar exercise’s in the nearest future.

A part of the project activities has been focused on testing data acquisition on a limited area of the corridor with the partner Swop Aero. A two days exercise has been performed in the Nsanje district, an area in the south of the country that is flood-prone and has been heavily affected by flooding in the 2019. Big flooding events in that area are recurrent (every 5 years), and the activities performed on the field aims also to provide support for the emergency preparedness and response before the next disaster is expected. The company, who won a commercial tender and is currently working in the corridor on behalf of UNICEF Malawi, is expected to run organized and automated drone mapping missions in order to acquire large amounts of aerial data, suitable for post-processing with a photogrammetry software which will then be used for further analysis for various multiple applications that, apart from flood modelling, will include mosquito breeding site identification, watershed monitoring, and similar.

Thanks to the ISPRS support, Politecnico di Torino donated 2 units of GNSS survey equipment’s to UNICEF Malawi. Agisoft Metashape issued one-year software licenses for continuing with the activities of the project. Amazon, on the other hand, donated 3 units of their world class ruggedized supercomputer (Amazon Snowball edge) to UNICEF Malawi. The device will be used by for processing of large sized drone imagery, storage of the imagery as well as sharing the processed file(s) to hosted cloud server. This in turn, will support UNICEF’s programmatic efforts, most especially around the flood modelling project and the planned mosquito breeding sites mapping.