Remote Sensing and disaster management in Africa

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• Remote Sensing and disaster management in Africa
• 10- 11 December 2007
• ITU (Geneva - Switzerland)
• Dr. Tesfaye Korme,
• Director for Remote Sensing, GIS and Mapping
  Section
• Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for
  Development (RCMRD), Nairobi-Kenya

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Outline of Presentation

• About the Regional Centre (RCMRD)
• Remote Sensing as a Tool
• Major Disasters in Africa
• Recent efforts and future perspective in Disaster
  management in Africa

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II. About Regional Centre for Mapping of
Resources for Development (RCMRD) In Nairobi-
Kenya
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History

• RCMRD was established in Nairobi - Kenya in 1975
  under the auspices of the United Nations Economic
  Commission for Africa.
• It is a non-profit making Inter-governmental
  Organization.
•  
•   Currently the Centre has 15 contracting member
  States namely Botswana, Comoros, Ethiopia,
  Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia,
  Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland,
  Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
• The countries affiliated to the Centre are
  Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Burundi,
  Madagascar, Djibouti, Eritrea, Zaire and South
  Africa.

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Mission and Vision of the Centre

•  
• Its Mission To promote the standardization,
  harmonization and
• development of geo-spatial data and
  information and strengthen
• the capability and capacity of the member
  States in the use of
• geo-spatial information for sustainable
  development.
• Its Vision To become a Centre of Excellence in
  Geo-information in Africa.

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Achievement Highlights

• Helped in the establishment and capacity of
  building of mapping
• agencies in its member States.
•  
• Trained over 4,500 technical / professional
  officers from its member
• States and other African countries in the
  fields of Surveying, Cartography,
• Remote Sensing and GIS.
•   Implemented numerous (450) mapping and
  resource assessment projects
• on behalf of its member States and development
  partners.
•  
•   Provided advisory and consultancy services in
  surveying, mapping,
• engineering, environmental assessment,
  planning and management.
•  

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II. Remote Sensing as a Tool

• ENVISAT EO-1
  EROS
  IKONOS
• (ESA) (USA)
  (Russia)
  (USA-P)
• IRS-1C KVR-1000
  Landsat 7
  TERRA
• (India) (Russia)
  (USA)
  (USA)
• 
  
• METOP OrbView-4
  QuickBird Spot-5
  TRIMM
• (ESA) (USA-P)
  (USA-P) (France)
  (USA)

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Advantages of Remote Sensing
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In disaster / risk management
Remote Sensing data is needed for

• Disaster preparedness
•  
• Disaster mitigation
•   Disaster monitoring
• the current situation
• before,
• during and
• after occurrence of Disaster.

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III. Major Disasters Frequently Occurring in
Africa

• Droughts
• Flooding
• Landslides
• Fire
• Volcanic Hazards
• Epidemic Diseases
• Land Degradation

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1. Drought

• Has become a recurrent phenomenon affecting
  millions of people in Africa each year

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• It is mainly related to climate change and
  variation
• Meteosat and NOAA are used for weather
  forecasting and
• impact of weather on crop/animal production.
• Low/high resolution data has been and continue
  to be used in
• assessment and monitoring of crop/biomass
  hectarage and
• condition.

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• Satellite based rainfall estimation

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Identification of Hotspots
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Ground Confirmation of hotspots
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Ground Confirmation of areas with better
conditions
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2. Flooding

• High resolution satellite data (SPOT, Landsat 7,
  Ikonos) have
• been extensively used in
• the assessment of the impacts of floods on the
  local populace
• monitoring floods
• modeling floods
• Examples Mozambique, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia,
  western Africa,
• Nile flooding in Khartoum.

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• Warning, tracking, damage assessment

Flooded Dwellings
Extensive flooding
Tree tops
IKONOS 1-Meter Panchromatic
MOZAMBIQUE FLOODS Feb/Mar 2000
IKONOS 4-Meter Multispectral
Flooded Agricultural Fields
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Hydro-meteorological conditions monitoring in
support of Early Warning of floods in Kenya
March May, 2003 rainfall season, Nzoia floods,
USGS and RCMRD team visited the area to validate
the Stream Flow Model notice the recent damage
and loss of property and livelihood
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• Production of flood inundation maps useful for
  response and contingency planning (case of Nzoia
  basin)

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3. Landslides
Satellite data provides rapid data for
development of DEM and Land cover which are
necessary for landslide vulnerability assessment
and monitoring. Several historical landslide
scars were mapped from Landsat Images in Kenya
and Ethiopia Examples Western Kenya,
Ethiopia, Malawi
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4. Fire

• Multi-temporal infrared satellite data provides
  very important
• information in forest fire detection.
• In Africa every year thousands of hectares of
  tropical forest and
• scrub are consumed by fire
• The frequency of occurrence of forest fire has
  increased due to
• the overall increase in temperature and aridity
• Examples Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Angola, South
  Sudan

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MODIS Data ANGOLA, AFRICA This remotely sensed
image was captured on May 5, 2004 by the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on
the Terra satellite. This photo shows numerous
fires throughout the countryside.
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5. Volcanic hazards
High resolution satellite data has been used in
the assessment of the extend and impact of
volcanic activities. Examples The application
in Goma in DRC and Mt. Etna, Italy
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Nyiragongo Volcano lava flow DR Congo, 31 Jan 2002
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(Landast-7, Terra and Space Shuttle)
Goma Volcanic Eruption, January and
July, 2002
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6. Epidemic diseases (predicting outbreaks of RVF
in GHA)
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7. Land Degradation

• Land degradation directly affects food
  productions and the
• earths environmental wellbeing.
• Satellite data and GIS has extensively been
  used in land
• degradation assessments and monitoring i.e
• - Forest depletion
• - Soil erosion hazard
• - Desertification hazard
• - Coastal denudation
• Example RCMRD has used these technologies in
  forest
• depletion assessment, soil
  erosion mapping, etc.

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IV. Recent efforts by RCMRD in Disaster
management in Africa
1. Real-time data acquisition and the DDS (ESA -
Support)

• DDS (Data Dissemination System) is an efficient
  microwave (Ku and C-bands) data transmission
  system has been installed in some of the regional
  centers .
• It is mainly used in uploading and downloading
  data
• The type of data transmitted via this system
  includes
• ENVISAT MERIS and ASAR data
• MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) data,
• Processed data such as LAI, NDVI, FPAR, etc.
• Other data such as ASTER and MODIS if upgraded

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2. Establishment of SERVIR Africa Node

• Capacity building for the Centre
• In data acquisition, archiving and dissemination
• Data Processing and
• Development of various applications
• Landslide mapping
• Epidemic diseases forecasting
• Flooding early warning
• Food security
• Land management
• Etc.

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• In Human resource capacity
• Training in long and short-terms
• Exchange of skills with other sister institutions
  
• Provide support for SDI imitative
• In developing standards and policy
• In developing metadata and archiving mechanism

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Conclusion

• Remote Sensing and GIS technologies have a high
  potential for use in
• Disaster management in Africa if the following
  are fulfilled
• Putting in place the right policies and
  infrastructure
• Build human capacity in rapid processing and
  interpretation of data
• required in disaster management
•   Make adequate budgetary provisions for timely
  acquisition and
• processing of appropriate satellite data and
  RS software and
• equipment
• Creation of national and regional partnerships
  in disaster
• management. for data and information sharing.
• Development of National Spatial Data
  Infrastructure (NSDI)
• for easy data and information sharing.

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END!

• Thank you for your attention!!
• Merci Pour Votre Attention!!