São Paulo – Brazil’s Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) and Germany’s University of Cologne partnered to set up a satellite data collection station in Sudan, an Arab country in Africa. Named the Extreme Sudan Climate (Xsude Proposal), the project began in 2022 but was suspended last year due to the ongoing conflict in Sudan.
The project aimed to set up a decentralized reception station in Sudan. This involves technology and equipment developed by the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (Eumetsat) for capturing and processing satellite images. In partnership with Eumetsat, the system was adapted in 2007 by the Laboratory for Analyzing and Processing Satellite Images (LAPIS) at UFAL.
The system is called EUMETCast. According to LAPIS Coordinator Professor Humberto Alves Barbosa, some key features of EUMETCast include its simplified infrastructure, low cost, and decentralized nature, meaning it doesn’t rely on government bureaucracies to obtain and process specific data. The system also operates without internet access.
This station receives, processes, and stores information obtained from satellites and combines it with other data related to soil, climate, and local vegetation. Together, all this information helps interpret the changes occurring in vegetation over time.
The system used in the UFAL laboratory is capable of mapping the vegetation cover of all of Brazil and assessing the evolution of forests and crops. In the Brazilian case, data obtained through EumetCast helped identify, for example, the expansion of arid areas in the Brazilian semi-arid region.
Implementation, technology transfer, and training in Sudan
The partnership with the Sudanese government, although in its early stages, initially envisioned an European agency providing equipment, while LAPIS would offer training to Sudanese technicians and share algorithms developed in the lab to work with the decentralized reception system in Sudan. Both UFAL and the University of Cologne would contribute technical knowledge and researchers. The German university has a Sudanese postdoctoral researcher in the field of hydrology.
“UFAL was the first university to install the system with its own infrastructure, which was small. This was a good showcase because people saw that it would be possible to implement it anywhere else in Brazil. Then we started training, and the news started to spread,” recalls the professor. “Institutions from Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Angola and Mozambique, also received training from LAPIS,” he says.
The news among government agencies, according to the researcher, reached the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests of Sudan. The first virtual meetings to establish timelines and the role of each institution in the partnership took place in 2022. However, in April 2023, the project was suspended. “I think it is very unlikely that we’ll be able to continue with the partnership in 2025, but things may change. We’re not working with the idea of making field visits and starting to establish a timeline in 2025,” says Barbosa.
The Sudanese were interested in the project because of the simplicity of its structure, compared to other stations of its kind, and because it would initially be deployed in the Central-South and South regions of the country, areas with vegetation characteristics similar to those found in the transition between the Cerrado and Caatinga in Brazil. The Nile River, Barbosa said, would play a key role in the research conducted by Sudanese technicians. The river runs through the country’s territory and is used by local farmers for crop cultivation.
The Sudanese expressed their intention to use the decentralized reception station in maize and cotton crops. If applied to these crops, Barbosa says, it could contribute to increased productivity.
Barbosa says that, although the project was being implemented in Sudan, other countries could benefit from this technology and training, including other Arab countries, as some Arab nations are in regions that see extreme weather events.
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Translated by Guilherme Miranda
