Its findings have been published in China’s prestigious Geospatial Information Science journal, and Chinese media have also highlighted this achievement.
Nahed Osama explained to “Sky News Arabia” the details of the new method she invented:
- Digital Elevation Models (DEMS) have an important role in modeling and representing the shape of the Earth’s surface, i.e. making a digital shape that matches the shape of the land area to be studied, and this is used in hydrological modeling to produce flood inundation maps, from which we can identify places threatened with drowning, especially in coastal areas, and produce backwater maps Torrential rains and anticipating the places where the floods will gather.
- Through this modeling, we can proactively protect people’s lives, prepare to benefit from flood water, and also we can monitor snow melting through digital elevation models, monitor the effect of global warming, monitor land mass movements, and establish three-dimensional cities or what is known as the smart city model. , as well as monitoring forests and green areas.
Get accurate data
- According to Nahed, the problem is that obtaining accurate reference data on a large scale to evaluate digital elevation models is very difficult, because ground field surveys are often impractical or expensive, especially for large, wide areas and require security clearances, time and effort.
- Some places are rugged, such as mountainous areas, or dangerous, such as conflict zones, or have predatory animals, and therefore it is difficult to collect ground data.
From here came the idea of the research that Nahed worked on, where she devised a new and effective method, about which she said:
- It improved the accuracy of lidar data collected by the ICE-Sat-2 satellite, which monitors ground surface elevations and vegetation elevations.
- The new method ranges in accuracy from tens of centimeters to a few meters, reaching 74 percent of its original accuracy after improvement.
- She confirmed that this new method is a strong alternative to the ground data observed by global positioning systems such as GPS, and also an alternative to the LIDAR data observed from the air from aircraft.
- LiDAR is a device that uses laser beams for imaging, by sending laser beams to the target and bouncing the rays a second time, so the time is determined, and this time is converted into distances, from which we can determine heights.
economic importance
Nahed Osama explained that her research has important economic results, whether for researchers in the fields of remote sensing or other sectors:
- It saves exorbitant costs for aerial lidar data collection by dedicated aircraft, and solves the issue of security clearances and the restriction of high-resolution data in some countries with a free alternative.
- It saves time and effort, as it is possible within a few minutes to download lidar data from the satellite and process it without the need for any prior arrangements,” noting that this research “is a golden opportunity for every researcher or user who wants to obtain renewable and high-accuracy lidar data for free, to evaluate any research project.” Or national projects that need vast areas to be established and anywhere in the world.
Nahed’s Scientific Journey
- Nahed graduated with a very good grade from the Department of Surveying and Geomatics Engineering at Shubra Engineering, Benha University in 2014, and was appointed to work as a civil engineer in Cairo Governorate in 2015, then moved to work as a research assistant at the Egyptian National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences in 2016.
- In 2018, Nahed traveled to study a master’s degree at Wuhan University in China in the field of aerial photography and remote sensing in a laboratory, which is the first laboratory in the world in the field of remote sensing, according to her.
- After obtaining a master’s degree in 2020, she was nominated to complete her doctorate degree at the same university because of her first ranking in her class, and she also participated in many international conferences and won many awards for excellence in the first place in these conferences, and she was also nominated among the top 5 international students at the university Wuhan, and is currently studying a doctorate at the same university since 2020.
- Nahed is a member of the International Society for Aerial Photography and Remote Sensing (ISPRS).
- The interesting thing about Nahed’s story, as she said, is that her husband, Muhammad Farishah, is a researcher in the same specialty, and he is also studying for a doctorate at Wuhan University, and she is working to care for her husband and their young son, yet she achieved this huge scientific achievement.
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