The use of cloud based imagery services for understanding landscape change in support of opium monitoring in Afghanistan

关于阿富汗非法罂粟种植的信息对联合国毒品和犯罪问题办公室（毒品和犯罪问题办公室）的鸦片监测方案至关重要。由于水资源供应等环境压力以及与禁毒活动有关的社会和经济驱动因素，种植模式不断发生变化。遥感已经在收集有关鸦片种植面积及其空间分布的信息方面发挥了关键作用。向云计算的转变为从长期地球观测项目的大量卫星数据中提取新信息开辟了令人兴奋的可能性。你将检验植被生长周期的年际和季节内变化是罂粟种植风险预测因素的假设。这将涉及利用新兴的基于云的技术，将图像数据处理成与鸦片种植有关的准确和及时的植被动态信息。

Information on illicit poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is of critical importance to the opium monitoring programme of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The pattern of cultivation is constantly evolving because of environmental pressures, such as water availability, and social and economic drivers related to counter narcotics activity. Remote sensing already plays a key role in gathering information on the area of opium cultivation and its spatial distribution. The shift to cloud computing opens up exciting possibilities for extracting new information from the huge amounts of satellite data from long-term earth observation programmes. You will test the hypothesis that inter-annual and intra-seasonal changes in vegetation growth cycles are predictors of poppy cultivation risk. This will involve using emerging cloud based technologies for processing image data into accurate and timely information on vegetation dynamics relating to opium cultivation.