Remote Sensing Archeology Using Satellite Imagery

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings
identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt. More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings, including two suspected pyramids.

The work has been pioneered at the University of Alabama at Birmingham by US Egyptologist Dr Sarah Parcak.

She says she was amazed at how much she and her team has found. 

"We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "Aha!" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt.

"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," she said.

The infrared image on the right reveals the ancient
city streets of Tanis near modern-day San El Hagar

The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface.

Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface.

Test excavations

Ancient Egyptians built their houses and structures out of mud brick, which is much denser than the soil that surrounds it, so the shapes of houses, temples and tombs can be seen.

"It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements," says Dr Parcak.

And she believes there are more antiquities to be discovered:

"These are just the sites [close to] the surface. There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work."

BBC cameras followed Dr Parcak on her "nervous" journey when she traveled to Egypt to see if excavations could back up what her technology could see under the surface.

In the BBC documentary Egypt's Lost Cities, they visit an area of Saqqara (Sakkara) where the authorities were not initially interested in her findings.

An infra-red satellite image shows a buried pyramid, 
located in the center of the highlight box.

But after being told by Dr Parcak that she had seen two potential pyramids, they made test excavations, and they now believe it is one of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt.

But Dr Parcak said the most exciting moment was visiting the excavations at Tanis.

"They'd excavated a 3,000-year-old house that the satellite imagery had shown and the outline of the structure matched the satellite imagery almost perfectly. That was real validation of the technology."

The Egyptian authorities plan to use the technology to help - among other things - protect the country's antiquities in the future.

During the recent revolution, looters accessed some well-known archaeological sites.

"We can tell from the imagery a tomb was looted from a particular period of time and we can alert Interpol to watch out for antiquities from that time that may be offered for sale."

She also hopes the new technology will help engage young people in science and will be a major help for archaeologists around the world.

"It allows us to be more focused and selective in the work we do. Faced with a massive site, you don't know where to start.

"It's an important tool to focus where we're excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger and that's what the satellites allow us to do."

"Indiana Jones is old school, we've moved on from Indy. Sorry, Harrison Ford."

Egypt's Lost Cities is on BBC. It will also be shown on the Discovery channel in the US.

The use of remote sensing in archeology is gaining use as a valuable tool for identifying buried ancient settlements.  NASA has a site outlining its use of remote sensing in archaeology with information about research in the Arenal Region of Costa Rica, and Chaco Canyon, NM.  

NOVA also has a write-up on the use of remote sensing in archaeology: The Sky’s Eyes: Remote Sensing in Archaeology.

How Smartphones Became Vital Tools Against Dengue In Pakistan

As reported by NPR: A line of men in black rain boots push trash carts through the alleys of Lahore, Pakistan. They stop at an open sewer along a neighborhood street and start to pull up shoes, bricks, plates and any other trash that might block the flow of waste water.

Standing water is a prime breeding ground for mosquitoes. And the local government in Lahore is on a focused mission: Stop the spread of dengue fever by mosquitoes.

Two years ago, an estimated 20,000 people in and around the city of Lahore contracted the deadly tropical disease. This year, the region has recorded just a few dozen cases of dengue fever, which usually involves a high fever, horrible headache, and severe bone and joint pain.

What triggered the sharp decline in dengue cases? Fortuitous weather patterns may have helped to keep the mosquito population low. But many leaders also credit a mobile phone app — and the public health campaign that uses it.

"We pull up the trash, put it in the basket, tie up the bag and take it away," says sanitation worker Tanvir Channa. He says that he doesn't often think about his role in combating a deadly epidemic. "Whatever I do, it's just to provide for my kids," the thin 30-year-old says.

To make sure workers like Channa don't skip out on their tasks and allow the dengue mosquitoes to breed, they're followed by an investigator who uses a smartphone to their progress. In this case, it's a tall man in plaid shirt named Mohammad Saleem Taqi.

"I open this application, called Clean Lahore, to enter a field activity," he says. "I take pictures before and after the work is done, enable location services to map (geo-tag) this spot, and then send it on to my supervisors."

Workers drop tilapia fish into a a small pond at a neighborhood park,
as an inspector enters the activity into the Clean Lahore app.
The fish eat the larvae of mosquitoes that spread dengue fever.

"Of course it seemed strange at first," Channa says, of having his picture taken on the job. But now he feels the monitoring campaign is to his benefit because the photos show supervisors that he's on the job and can't be marked absent.

Across town from the sewer, men with the fishery department tip a bucket of water into a small neighborhood pond. Dozens of tiny tilapia fish swim into the pond. These fish have a taste for mosquito larvae and naturally curb the mosquito population.

As the two men work, an inspector snaps a photo of them with the Clean Lahore app.

The app is the brainchild of Umar Saif, a Cambridge-educated computer scientist, who now manages part of the anti-dengue campaign.

"So let me tell you the story from the top," Saif says, settling into a couch in the center of his office in a Lahore high-rise building.

For him, the story begins in the summer of 2011. "What happened is, Punjab was hit with one of the worst dengue epidemics anywhere in the world."

Government officials realized they would need to work harder — and smarter — to prevent another epidemic. That's why they turned to Saif. He developed a smartphone app to track all efforts to prevent the disease. And the idea has contributed to the city's striking success against dengue.

"If Punjab averted another epidemic in 2012, then it didn't happen by accident," Saif says. "There were 67,000 different prevention activities [that] were performed and were photo-logged by the smartphones."

Other public health researchers have suggested that the decline in dengue cases might be because of environmental factors, at least in part. But still, the government's prevention campaign has been widely lauded.

One reason for the accolades is that Saif took the mobile campaign one step further: He built a Google map that correlates the locations of dengue cases and hot spots for mosquito larvae. "So there's a clear pattern of disease outbreak that corresponds to reports of positive dengue larvae," he says.

With these visuals, Saif and his team could zero in on problem regions in the province and predict future outbreaks.

The mobile phone campaign also helps to stop another issue that plagues Pakistan: entrenched public sector corruption.

"You have people who have not done — maybe for decades — work as well as they were supposed to do," Saif says. "So the government needs to therefore now use technology in innovative ways to monitor its functions."

"This is quite remarkable," says Columbia University's Patty Mechael, who studies how mobile technology is helping public health, says about the anti-dengue campaign.

When it comes to tracking infectious diseases with cellphones, Mechael says, the possibilities are endless. "It's really up to the health sector to imagine what it needs and then think about where mobile technology can actually play a role in solving some of those problems."

In a report by MIT Technology, analysis of cell phone traffic using big-data analysis techniques have also been used recently to help fight malaria in Africa, showing that even without smartphones analysis of communication traffic can be used to help support public health issues.

Space Weather the Cause of Recent Satellite Failures

Solar storms carrying highly charged matter could have caused
the recent malfunctions of satellites affecting TV, GPS/GNSS
and Internet signals.

As reported by Latinos Post: Turns out that nasty space weather may be the reason behind a number of television, Internet, and communications outages down here on planet Earth. According to one study in the journal Space Weather, charged particles from space phenomena such as solar flares and geomagnetic storms are causing greater damage to our satellites than previously thought.

By analyzing 26 geostationary satellite failures in eight satellites over 16 years, a team of MIT researchers discovered that the failures tended to happen when there was a high level of electron activity due to phases in the solar cycle. The scientists theorize that a buildup of these charged particles led to the deterioration and ultimate failures of the satellites. These failures can affect satellites in charge of television or Internet signals even though they are traditionally created to last 15 years, creating a communications disruption on the ground.

"If we can understand how the environment affects these satellites, and we can design to improve the satellites to be more tolerant, then it would be very beneficial not just in cost, but also in efficiency," says Whitney Lohmeyer, a graduate student at MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"Users are starting to demand more capabilities. They want to start video-streaming data, they want to communicate faster with higher data rates. So design is changing -- along with susceptibilities to space weather and radiation that didn't used to exist, but are now becoming a problem."

A satellite's view of space weather affecting the Earth's
magnetosphere.

Despite the promising results, the scientists are cautioning against an easy fix. Cosmic weather patterns are more difficult to understand than those linked to our atmosphere, and there are the obvious logistics of repairing something above in space. 

"But space weather is a lot more dynamic than models predict, and there are many different ways that charged particles can wreak havoc on your satellite's electronics," explains Kerri Cahoy, an assistant professor at the MIT Department of Aeronatuics and Astronautics. "The hard part about satellites is that when something goes wrong, you don't get it back to do analysis and figure out what happened."

The New Smartphones: A Universal Remote For...Everything

The ability to control all your other gadgets, even your car and
your house, could be coming to a smartphone near you.

As reported by ReadWrite: Imagine that your new iPhone 5S or Android smartphone could control all aspects of your life. Change channels on your TV, start your car, change the temperature in your house, pay for your coffee, the watch on your wrist … everything. Think of a smartphone as universal remote for your entire life.

It’s a reality that is not so far away.

Three aspects of iOS and Android, the operating systems that run the majority of smartphones, are leading us to a future where those phones will have the ability to control everything around us: the explosion of the app ecosystem, the evolution of Bluetooth and the adoption of a standard called Wi-Fi Direct.

Couple these aspects with the continued growth and maturation of what is called the “Internet of Things,” and you have laid the groundwork for a smartphone that can directly control, track or measure everything with which you come in contact.

Take the just-announced iPhone 5S, for example. It will support both Bluetooth Smart and Wi-Fi Direct, and has capabilities built in to perform new functions such as AirDrop local sharing. Behind it stands Apple's thriving ecosystem, which will continue to churn out new apps that take advantage of those functions. All that makes the iPhone 5S not just Apple’s latest and greatest device, but one of the first devices available that has the potential to be a true universal remote.

Apps & Cloud Provide Interface & Opportunity
You’ve probably seen commercials where a person uses a smartphone to start their car or set a home alarm. These are examples of how apps can control things in your life. Yet these examples are not direct one-to-one connections where the smartphone connects directly to the gadget (alarm system or vehicle’s computer) in question. Rather these types of apps use cloud computing to provide functionality.

To control objects that aren't in their general vicinity, apps must go through an intermediary. This intermediary can be a server in the cloud or a home's Wi-Fi router. A smartphone user can then use an app to tell the object (the car or home security system) what they want it to do. The request is routed through the router or the cloud. The target object retrieves that information from the cloud and makes the appropriate action.

It is hard to overstate how much the maturation of cloud computing has enabled mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. By connecting to the cloud, smartphones and tablets don't have to perform processor-intensive calculations directly, and instead can leave the heavy lifting to a much more powerful server somewhere else.

The same goes for the other side of the equation. Vehicles, home thermostats and security systems don't have to perform complex calculations directly; all they have to do is act on directives passed down from the cloud.

The app is the vehicle that creates the opportunity to build this type of functionality. Think of it as a wormhole through which you can reach your hand and perform an action somewhere else. The more people with smartphones in their hands, the more wormholes—apps—will make smartphones the remotes that control our lives.

Over the past few years, the cloud has been the center of how smart devices and the Internet of Things interact. Yet with advances in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct, the cloud won't have to carry the main burden.

The Direct Connection: Bluetooth Smart & Wi-Fi Direct
Smartphones are getting smarter, and two different wireless standards are helping spur that evolution.

Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth Smart) is part of the Bluetooth Core Specification 4.0. It allows for devices to connect over a distance of about 160 feet and transfer data and wireless connections to each other. It does this (as you may have guessed by the name) in a power efficient manner so as to save the battery of both devices. Bluetooth Smart is a one-to-one connection between devices that does not require an intermediary yet still allows rich data (music, notifications, cellular connectivity like 3G/4G and others) to be shared.

The best recent example of Bluetooth Smart in action is the way the new Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch connects with the Galaxy Note 3 smartphone. Apple also uses a Bluetooth Smart function in iOS 7 with a new feature called iBeacon. This feature creates a bubble area around an app "a beacon" that is similar to a geo-fence. When you and your bubble come into contact with another bubble (say, a grocery or a retail store) an action will occur. For instance, if I am at my local coffee shop and it has an iBeacon, it will connect to iPhone and allow me to do something like make a payment or send me a coupon. iBeacon could be set up in an apartment to connect other gadgets to the iPhone via Bluetooth Smart the minute you walk in the door.

Wi-Fi Direct is similar to Bluetooth Low Energy, but in many ways is more robust. Wi-Fi Direct is a way to create a connection between two devices without going through Wi-Fi router in a fairly simple manner. The best example of Wi-Fi Direct is how easy it has become to connect your home printer with your computer. Instead of the lengthy and complicated process that used to take place when connecting two devices, now it is simple as hitting a single button on the computer and one on the printer and saying “connect.”

Wi-Fi Direct can be used for streaming music or video from one device to another, sharing documents, media or pictures or letting one device control another (such a your PC to your printer).

Apple will use Wi-Fi Direct in iOS 7 for a feature called AirDrop that will allow you to share pictures and documents from one iPhone to another. The feature has been available in Mac computers since Apple released the Mac OS X “Lion” update.

What do Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct have in common? They allow interaction between devices on a one-to-one basis. Imagine walking into your house and everything inside automatically connecting to your smartphone. From an app, you could turn on the lights in the kitchen, turn on the TV (and tell it what to watch), pre-heat the oven for dinner and download your work files from your home computer.

That would be pretty cool, right? It is technically possible right now, though there are some obstacles that would have to be overcome for your smartphone to become the universal remote for your life.

Adoption & Ecosystems: Getting Everybody On The Same Page
Getting all of these devices to play nice with each other may be the biggest obstacle. Different companies have different agendas, different platforms and the same basic need: your money. Hence, those companies will create solutions that will force you to stay within their ecosystem and product lines.

AirDrop can only work with other Apple products. Google’s Chromecast TV dongle (that lets you use a tablet or smartphone as a remote for your TV to watch YouTube or Netflix) uses standard Wi-Fi and doesn’t play nice with other wireless streaming standards like Miracast or Wi-Fi Direct. Samsung’s “S Beam” and other sharing capabilities are intended to be used only with other Samsung devices like TVs, laptops or tablets.

Then there is the standard dilemma of consumer adoption. Mobile technology often moves faster than consumers do, making it hard to keep pace. Most consumers will get a new smartphone about once every two years. Multiply that by three or more for other consumer items, like a new car, home security system or television, and you can see the problem. To set up your new iPhone 5S as a universal remote, you are going to need to be on the bleeding edge of just about every kind of new technology.

That doesn’t mean that your new iPhone or top of the line Android smartphone won’t be able to perform many of these functions on an individual basis. You can use your iPhone 5S to stream media to an Apple TV and share files with friends. Or to control a smart thermostat like Nest.

Solutions may be scattered today, but the journey to make your smartphone the remote that controls everything around you is well on its way.

Three-Quarters Of Smartphone Users Rely On Location-Based Services

Smartphone apps and crowdsourced map data are quickly
overtaking the fixed sat-nav device market dominated by
Garmin and TomTom.

As reported by redOrbit: A majority of smartphone owners use their phones’ location-based services, and a growing number are adding location information to their online posts, according to a new report about the role location-based services play in our daily digital lives.

The report, released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, was based on a survey of more than 2,000 adult smartphone users, which found that 74 percent use their phone to get directions or other information based on their current location.

The survey also revealed significant growth in the number of social media users who set their accounts to include location in their posts. Among adult social media users, 30 percent said that at least one of their accounts is currently set up to include their location in their posts, up from 14 percent who reported doing so in 2011.

The survey also found a decline in the number of smartphone owners who use “check in” location services, with 12 percent of adult smartphone owners saying they currently use a geosocial service to “check in” to certain locations, or share their location with a friend. In early 2012, 18 percent of adult smartphone users reported using “check in” services.

Among geosocial service users, 39 percent said they check into places on Facebook, while 18 percent said they use Foursquare and 14 percent use Google Plus, among other services.

The survey was based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 17 to May 19, 2013, among a sample of 2,252 adults aged 18 and older. Telephone interviews were conducted in English and Spanish by landline and cell phone.

Crowdsourced Mapping Continues to be the New Force in Navigation

Telenav hasn’t just hired OpenStreetMap founder
Steve Coast away from Microsoft; the navigation
company plans to wean itself entirely off of proprietary
cartography, relying solely on OSM’s
collaborative, crowdsourced and freely available maps.

As reported by GigaOM: Given the craziness of the first two weeks in September in the tech world an interesting hire that should have gotten more attention slipped largely through the cracks. Steve Coast, founder of the OpenStreetMap project, has joined Telenav, signaling a big move by the navigation outfit toward crowdsourced mapping.

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of mapping. OSM’s dedicated community of 1.3 million editors have gathered GPS data while driving, biking and walking the streets of the world to build a map from the ground up. They’ve even gone so far as to mark objects that exist on few other digital maps, from trees to park benches. That map was then offered up free to all comers.

What you probably didn’t know is that Telenav is has been an active contributor to OSM for years, using the data it collects from its Scout app and other nav products to improve OSM’s maps. Telenav’s Martijn van Exel is currently president of the OSM board in the U.S., and he created MapRoulette.org, which identifies problem spots on OSM’s maps and suggests corrections to its editors. What Telenav hasn’t done, though, is actually use OSM’s maps in its products.

Steve Coast

That’s all changing with the hire of Coast, who will oversee Telenav’s crowdsourced data gathering efforts and integrate OSM maps into the company’s navigation apps and services. Telenav isn’t moving tentatively either. OSM will eventually become the sole map data source for its consumer navigation software, starting with the browser-based version of Scout and then moving to its smartphone apps.

According to Coast, it’s a perfect marriage. For all of its strengths, OSM primarily has been a display map filled with an enormous amount of detail — Coast said editors will spend hours placing individual trees on boulevards. Many editors often don’t want to do the grunt work that makes maps truly useful for navigation, like filling in address data or labeling which turns are allowed at an intersection. What Telenav brings to the table is a huge base of users actually driving the map, generating all of those other bits of information that could make OSM navigable.

“Telenav and OpenStreetMap are sort of yin-yang partnership,” Coast said. “OpenStreetMap has this great rich map data set. What it doesn’t have is huge amounts of GPS data to improve the map, and millions of customers out there using the map every single day. When you combine those two things and get feedback from those customers – and there’s a variety of different pieces of feedback they can give to improve that map — it helps everybody.”

A world mapped by strangers

A decade ago, the world’s streets were mapped by Navteq and Tele Atlas (now owned by Nokia and TomTom respectively) and later by Google. They combined government data with satellite imagery and field huge fleets of mapping vehicles to generate detailed plans of our roadways.


But as GPS receivers became more readily available and mobile data connections more ubiquitous, regular old Joes like Coast started creating their own maps. After OSM got over the initial hump, its maps, in many cases, became more accurate than those of paid map suppliers, as editors would note road closures and new infrastructure long before a mapping vehicle’s next pass. Telenav made a fascinating video of Coast talking about the early days OSM and the mapping parties that generated its first datasets.

With Waze, though, collaborative cartography really hit its stride. Waze maps are proprietary, not open, but they’re most definitely crowdsourced. Millions of Wazers drive around every day with their phones in constant communication with the network. Not only do those phone identify new details and problems on its maps (Waze has its own dedicated community of editors), but they also send real-time information about how those roads are being driven. Some of that generated automatically by the app (speed or idle time), some of it come from submitted reports on construction, accidents, and even weather. Wazers are also particularly keen on labeling speed traps and traffic light cameras.

The point is Waze didn’t just create a static navigable map, it created a real-time representation of the current state of roads. The big mapping companies certainly took note. Google bought Waze for $1 billion in June, but it and other digital cartographers had been using crowdsourced data long before then to improve their products.

Before Coast joined Telenav, he worked at Microsoft for three years integrating crowdsourced data into Bing Maps. The fact that Coast left Microsoft would seem to indicate Microsoft has lost interest in crowdsourcing. But Coast’s departure, probably not a coincidentally, coincided with Microsoft’s announced plan to buy Nokia’s device division and license its Here mapping and nav platform.

Here may have old-school roots in Navteq, but it makes extensive use of crowdsourced data from Nokia’s smartphone apps to measure traffic, identify new roads and closures and to perform detailed analysis on how roads are driving.


For instance, in Here’s traffic center in Chicago, Nokia is using that data to determine the optimal points in a road curve to brake and accelerate in different types of weather conditions. That information will eventually go into its Here Auto connected car system, giving drivers ever-more detailed guidance on not just how to drive, but how they can drive more efficiently and safely. Nokia EVP of Here Michael Halbherr will at speak GigaOM’s Mobilize conference in October to discuss how the map is becoming more an integral component of our internet and mobile services.

Telenav is definitely taking a pioneering stance by eschewing paid maps for open-source maps, but it’s safe to say crowdsourcing is delving its way deeply into proprietary maps as well. Every time we switch on Google Maps, Scout or Here we’re making their maps better.

What’s going to particularly interesting to watch is when that crowdsourcing moves out of our phones into the car itself. As vehicles become more connected they’ll not only be able to contribute to the map, they will be able to offer up much more information than our smartphones’ current complement of sensors could ever provide.


Cars are coming equipped with hundreds of sensors, measuring everything form tire traction to the distance to the car in front of you. Eventually cars will network with each other and the vehicles around them. Our future maps won’t just provide us with general views of real-time traffic conditions. They’ll know the actual position of every car around us.

GPS Navigation Market is Forecast to Increase Despite Decline in Dedicated Sat-Nav Equipment

The market for portable GPS-enabled navigation devices is forecast to grow from 33.3 million units last year to 36.79 million in 2018, despite an anticipated dip this year. Similarly, total revenue from these device is expected to fluctuate for the next couple of years but will rise to $7.14 billion (£4.5 billion) in 2018.

According to ABI Research, this growth will come from dedicated GPS-equipped head-up displays, eyeware, cycling, health and tracking devices. However, sales of personal navigation ‘sat-nav’ equipment are still declining… and smartphones, smart watches and smart eyewear also threaten the market for dedicated devices.

Dominique Bonte, Vice President and Group Director for Telematics & M2M at ABI Research, said “The markets for cycling computers, health/elderly, and fitness are starting to get interesting. As ASPs decline and smart watches become a more established part of our lives, the addressable market will be eaten up, limiting the growth potential for dedicated fitness devices. 

Looking longer term, ABI Research has forecast very strong growth for HUD/eyewear devices, particularly in the fitness, golf, and cycling categories. It would not be surprising to see an acquisition in this space over the next 12 months.”