5 February 2010: Satellites tasked to aid relief efforts in Haiti
[New York | Author: UNIS Vienna]
On 12 January 2010, immediately after Haiti was hit by a violent earthquake, staff members from the Office for Outer Space Affairs (OOSA) started mobilizing people and resources to provide satellite images for relief efforts on the ground. OOSA’s programme for such assistance is the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response ( UN-SPIDER ), which serves as a bridge between space agencies and disaster management entities.
After having been alerted to the disaster, Lorant Czaran, UN-SPIDER programme officer, liaised with colleagues working on GIS at the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), who requested OOSA to “activate” the International Charter Space and Major Disasters , as well as other existing international mechanisms that facilitate the access to satellite images for emergency response. By alerting partnering satellite operators, they were able to take post-disaster images of the impacted area and make them available, free of charge, to relief agencies.
Space images aiding emergency response
Space images are vital for ensuring the effectiveness of relief efforts on the ground. As Juan Carlos Villagrán, UN-SPIDER Programme Officer, explains: “the images can be used by relief agencies to design a strategy. For example, they can be used to see which areas have been destroyed, which areas will need more water, food and medicine, and which roads are still passable.” This kind of information is essential to the neediest populations in the shortest time possible.
The operation is far from simple. Satellites cannot move to the right place immediately and the weather conditions might not be favourable. Several days might go by before satellites reach the right position and even more time might pass before the sky is clear enough to get a cloud-free image.
In the case of Haiti, the weather conditions were not a problem. However, the fact that much of the country's infrastructure, including its entire cartographic capabilities, had been wiped out was a major obstacle and logistical nightmare. In order to give local capacity an immediate boost, OOSA staff delivered in person more than 30 gigabytes of images that had been received directly from satellite operators.
The latest available space-based information, including space-derived images, maps and related geospatial data of the affected areas are compiled, organized and disseminated through the UN-SPIDER knowledge portal . But in the case of Haiti, as Mr. Villagrán explains, the satellite images were transported in a hard drive because “it would’ve taken too long for the response teams in Haiti to download the images” given the reduced bandwidth they were left with.
From relief to reconstruction
In the three weeks that have passed since the earthquake, the nature of the efforts on the ground in Haiti is changing from rescue to recovery and reconstruction. As a result, space-based images are now being used in slightly different ways. Now they can be used to track the displacement of people and for choosing sites that could accommodate large temporary settlements.
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According to one of the UN-SPIDER experts, satellite images can be used “to see slopes, whether there are natural resources, whether a planned camp is anywhere near an electricity grid or road system”. It is clear that such information could be put to very good use, given that more than 200,000 people are living in 150 spontaneous settlements and that the Government of Haiti indicated that over 482,000 people have left Port-au-Prince for outlying departments. ( See OCHA situation report of 1 February 2010 ).
Coordination within the United Nations system
In carrying out its role, OOSA has offered its unique services to other United Nations entities, in particular from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and MINUSTAH, and has coordinated with the civilian protection authorities of Haiti, Dominican Republic and Colombia, and representatives of the United States Agency for International Development and the United States armed forces. This is part of OOSA’s efforts to ensure access and usage of space-derived information and imagery during all phases of the disaster management cycle.
As David Stevens, UN-SPIDER Programme Coordinator, puts it: “As was the case with Haiti, when a disaster strikes next, we are ready to help other United Nations agencies involved in humanitarian and emergency response by providing satellite imagery and data in support of relief efforts.”