ISEIS Report on UN-ESCAP & SSEF Supported Participants in 2018

ISEIS Report on UN-ESCAP & SSEF supported Participants in 2018-2019

Report

On Ms. Kisolel Lina POSANAU Climate Scientist - PNG National Weather Service, Papua New Guinea Mr. Heshan GUNASEKERA Computer Programmer - Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, Sri Lanka

For MSc in Geo-survey and Public Management (2018-2019)

Travel Grant by: UNESCAP Scholarship funded by: SSEF

Institute of Space and Earth Information Science Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin Hong Kong

April 2019

Master of Science in Geo-Survey and Public Management at ISEIS The programme commenced on September 3, 2018 at the Institute of Space and Earth Information Science in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The full-time MSc programme covers one year with three semesters. The objectives of this programme are: 1. Students get an appreciation of geo-information on national conditions 2. Be knowledgeable in geo-survey and geo-analysis methods 3. Be better prepared for public policy studies and precise public management The academic staffs at ISEIS are very skilled professionals and knowledgeable in their field or area of study and all the classes were taught in English. were superb with very high level of skills and knowledge in their field or area of study and all the classes were taught in English. REPORT: Heshan GUNASEKERA A. The course modules Total courses that I took in both semester one and two were 8 courses (6 major and 2 electives). The final course project in which we write our thesis is the major course project to be taken in summer term. This will have 4 credit points. The oral defence is set later at the end of June. B. Field trips In Semester one I participated in a field trip at Tai O fishing village for the course Environmental Remote Sensing Technology, we classified a satellite image of the study area prior to the field trip and observer the true locations and compared to our classification results. In semester two, I participated in a combined field trip for the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring course and Geoinformation Technologies for Risk and Crises Management course to Tung Ping Chau island. We tracked the whole field trip with GPS trackers provided to us by Dr. Li Gang (Lecturer of GNSS course).

C. Projects and ongoing research For the last two semesters, I did 6 group projects and two individual projects. From our research and the project, I intend to continue with funding when I return to my country. Here are some outline information of the projects and research work that was carried out. Individual Projects 1. Investigating Impact of deforestation on mountain areas for landslides in Sri Lanka. Course - Introduction to Geo-survey and Public Management Instructor - Dr. WONG C. Janice Landsat Images with 30m resolution and R, G, B and NIR Bands was selected as the data for spatial analysis. Central mountain area of the country above 300m height was selected as the study area. Satellite images of 1992 and 2001 was Classified and the overall accuracy of land use classifications were 98.20% and 97.41% respectively. It showed that the “bare land” area has been increasing and the forest cover has been decreasing when the results were compared. Satellites images of 1988, 2006 2009 and 2018 was used to calculate NDVI and then was compared to the number of landslides events in those years except 2018. This comparison clearly shows a direct proportional relationship between the deforestation of mountain areas and the increasing of landslides incidents. So, the results of this project are clearly emphasizing that it is very important to do reforestation in the mountain area of the country to minimize the number of annual landslides.

2. Comparison of Centralities between cities having Higher Traffic Indices & Lower Traffic Indices. Course - Urban Networks Instructor - Dr. WONG C. Janice The main goal of this network analysis project is to identify whether there is a relationship between common network centrality measures and the traffic situations in the road networks of major cities around the world. Urban Road Network Data was retrieved as shapefiles from website called FIGSHARE. this dataset contains the Urban road networks of 80 of the most populated urban cities in the world. Then 8 cities were selected in 2 categories considering the available road network data and the current Traffic Index values retrieved from a website called NUMBEO. 2 categories are cities with good traffic management and cities with Bad traffic management. Then the network centralities of the road networks of the selected cities were calculated in ArcGIS with the help of “Urban Network Analysis Toolbox”. 3 centralities were calculated namely Betweenness Centrality, Straightness Centrality and Closeness Centrality Finally, the average values of these calculated centralities were compared between all the selected cities along with the population densities of those cities.

Group Projects 3. Investigating Invasion pattern of Sonneratia in Mai Po Nature Reserve. Course - Special Topics in GeoInformation Sciences Instructor – Prof. Hui Lin & Dr. Ann Mak Group Members - Luoma WAN & Heshan Gunasekera This project is carried out to find out where is the Sonneratia in Mai Po, what is the distribution pattern in Mai Po area as well as to examine what factors have supported the distribution pattern. Since Sonneratia was first found in 2000 inside the Mai Po Reserve, we used high resolution image of Mai Po mangrove forest area from Google Earth in February 2000 and February 2003. After performing various GIS operations and analysis we found that waterway is an important fact for Sonneratia distribution, but not the major driven factor. Tide is the major factor for Sonneratia distribution along with the support from the mudflat.

4. Investigating Spatial and temporal land cover changes in Xiong'an New Area in 2016-2018. Course - Environmental Remote Sensing Technology Instructor – Prof. Hongsheng Zhang Group Members - YAN Yizhen, JIANG Xiaolu & Heshan Gunasekera This project aims at analyzing the short-term land cover changes in order to explore the development nature of Xiong’an New Area. The remote sensing images from Sentinel-2 satellite were used for a supervised classification through the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm in the three years of 2016, 2017 and 2018. The accuracy of the land cover classification ranged from 86.0% to 94.5%. The results revealed that the urban land areas were consistently increased, while the rate of expansion was decreasing in the three years. In addition, the spatial distribution of urban land cover changed into the centralization from decentralization multipoint. These results will be helpful for understanding the development of the Xiong’an New Area.

5. Spatial analysis of house prices and public facilities in Shenzhen. Course - Spatial Analysis for Public Policy Instructor – Dr. Li Rongrong Group Members - Yan Yizhen, Jiang Xiaolu, Kisolel Lina Posanau & Heshan Gunasekera This research aims at exploring the relationship between the residential house prices and public facilities through combining the geographic information system (GIS) spatial analysis and the geographical weighted regression (GWR) modelling in Shenzhen city, China. The hotspot analysis and Kriging interpolation were applied to define the spatial distribution of the residential house prices in Shenzhen city. The study defined the factors as two groups, the distances from the houses to the nearest public facilities and the number of public facilities in a certain neighbourhood of each house, respectively. The traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) models were firstly constructed to identify the key factors that significantly influenced the residential house prices. Finally, the GWR model results illustrated the residential house prices in Shenzhen city were more influenced by the factor of the distances from the houses to the nearest public facilities. Among, the variables that were considered as factors contributing to house prices was subway, mall and secondary school.

6. Identification of high-risk tree collapse area during typhoon in Hong Kong. Course - Geoinformation Technologies for Risk and Crises Management Instructor – Prof. Hongsheng Zhang Group Members - Chan Ching Yan Alice, Wang Tianyi & Heshan Gunasekera By identifying the high-risk tree collapse area, we can make prevention in advance to reduce the adverse effect. With the help of advanced remote sensing technology, we can easily produce risk map like this which help to do better risk management. We believe that the technology will become more advance in the future and the result could be produced with high accuracy . In this project we produced a Tree Collapsing probability Disaster Risk Map of Hong Kong with the help of Sentinel-2 Satellite images and several GIS tools.

REPORT: Kisolel Lina POSANAU A. The course modules Total courses that were taken in both semesters were 9 courses (6 major and 3 electives). The final course project in which we write and present our thesis is the major course project to be taken in summer term from May 13 – June 25. B. Field trips and visits ESGS5006 course Principals of Hydrology: San Tin Flood Pumping Station, Yuen Long By- pass Floodway, Compensation Wetland, Fabric Dam and Pumping station, Confluence of Kam Tin River and Shan Pui River, Water Supplies Department. We visited the sites with our Professor Chen and combined with Environmental Science students of CUHK. To study how Hong Kong manages its water systems and flood monitoring systems. ESGS5019 course Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring and ESGS5017 course Geoinformation Technologies for Risk and Crises Management: Visit to Tung Ping Chau island. We tracked our path with GPS trackers provided to us by Dr. Li Gang (Lecturer of GNSS). Tung Ping Chau is Hong Kong’s UNESCO Global Geopark. C. Seminars 11 Jan Point Cloud Processing at GI Lab by Prof. Ruisheng Wang, Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary, Canada. He presented an overview of point cloud processing in the Geospatial Intelligence Laboratory at their university. Their recent work using aerial LiDAR data. 22 Feb Integrating Geospatial Technologies, Environmental Science and Health Research by Prof. Mei Po Kwan – Director of Space-Time Analysis and Research Lab (StarLab), Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her presentation was on recent conceptual and methodological developments that help advance interdisciplinary research on interaction between human health and environment. ` 15 Mar Making Sense of the Climate-war Nexus in History by Prof. Harry F. Lee, Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Presentation on the current debate of the climate-war nexus to reveal its controversies and also a simple conceptual framework proposed to solve those controversies. 22 Mar Remote sensing application and geospatial analysis to evaluate community health risk associated with weather-related air pollution events by Prof. Hung Chak Ho, Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong. Study used Satellite-derived aerosol optical depth (AOD) product retrieved from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and was applied to estimate spatial variability of air quality during the weather-related air pollution events.

D. Research Meetings This semester, I attended our regular Remote Sensing meeting and also attended a course on Research Methods. We had the opportunity to hear the PhD students present their proposal and what research they are conducting at ISEIS. In the group meetings, we are able to do a lot of critical thinking and open discussions on papers that were reviewed as well as how to write good proposals for funding a research or project.

E. Projects and ongoing research My final project for summer term will be based on analysis of EL NINO series in Papua New Guinea using satellite images against statistical data. There could be a possibility to introduce a new drought index to help meteorological and agricultural drought. For the last two semesters, I did a total of six group projects and two individual projects. Two of the projects were focused on areas in Papua New Guinea, the others were on disaster risk reduction, environmental issues and some policy making decisions. Here is a brief outline on some of the projects that were carried out for assessment. 1. The spatial analysis of solar power locations applying Geographic Information System and Decision-Making methods: Papua New Guinea Course - Introduction to Geo-survey and Public Management Instructor - Dr. WONG C. Janice The proposal question was how would solar energy contribute to solving the 78% of Papua New Guinea (PNG) that has no access to electricity? Almost 80% of the total population of PNG live in rural areas. An analysis in assessing possible site location for solar power stations in Papua New Guinea by using GIS, meteorological data and also decision-making methods.

This GIS map was generated using the following attributes which are: provincial boundaries, major road network, water areas and major rivers or lakes. 2. Temporal Analysis of Land use and coastal reclamation in Hong Kong Island Course - Special Topics in GeoInformation Sciences Instructor – Prof. LIN Hui & Dr. Ann MAK Group Members – WANG Yuan & POSANAU Kisolel Aim & Objectives Showing the spatial & temporal change in reclamation of Hong Kong Island. To identify that most of the reclaimed land was used for development of infrastructure and compare with population analysis.

3. Typhoon Impact Assessment on Super Typhoon Haiyan in Barangay, Tacloban city Philippines Course - Environmental Remote Sensing Technology Instructor – Prof. ZHANG Hongsheng Group Members – LAU Chun Yin, PANG Kit & POSANAU Kisolel Two images of Tacloban city obtained from Google Map on 17th October 2013, which is the situation before typhoon Haiyan made a landfall on the Philippines and on 18th February 2014, 3 months after typhoon Haiyan made a landfall and struck Tacloban. The images were processed by ENVI 4.7 in order to investigate the difference in the same area before and after the catastrophe and later classify different features in the images in order to find out the number of pixels that corresponds to the feature. We can eventually find out the difference in the 2 images and find out the devastating effect done by the typhoon.

4. Flood Monitoring in Markham River, Morobe Province in Papua New Guinea. Course - Geoinformation Technologies for Risk and Crises Management Instructor – Prof. ZHANG Hongsheng Group Members – LAU Chun Yin, WONG Yee Tung & POSANAU Kisolel There are 3 objectives for this project. Firstly, flood and trend of Markham River was analysed. Secondly, current policy was investigated on flood management and prevention. Thirdly, insights and suggestions on disaster management in Markham River were discussed. After taking a brief look at the current situation of monitoring and prevention of disasters in Markham River, some suggestions were provided in order to aid a better disaster management and prevention for the government and NGOs to co-operate and local people to act before disaster happens. Analyses of satellites images (LANDSAT 7) on the river size and river width Images for river area measurements were taken in December River width was measured by observation and measurement on Google Earth River size was measured by classification of satellite images in ENVI Showing different trends with precipitation patterns

From findings and analyzing the results, there are changes in the river during wet and dry season from 2009 - 2018. These changes affect the people who live along the river and also those who travel through this river to their villages (Watut). Markham river is the largest river in Morobe Province & prone to floods This study stressed the need of an effective and reliable flood monitoring system.