Rapid Mapping to support disaster management in coastal communities

Kurzfassung

Due to the increasing occurrence of natural disasters, humanitarian emergency situations and civil endangerment, there is a growing need for timely information on rapidly evolving events. Satellite imagery can provide valuable information in emergency, crisis or disaster situation. Having recognized this need, an increasing number of space agencies are developing and operating infrastructures and services to offer earth observation resources to provide information for disaster management and humanitarian relief efforts. Experiences and results from that work are reported. It is described how data flows, analysis methods and information networks can be improved to allow better and faster access to remote sensing data and information in order to support the management of crisis situations effectively. This refers to all phases of a crisis or disaster situation, including pre¬paredness, response and recovery. Above the infrastructure and information flow elements, example cases of different crisis situations in the context of natural disasters, humanitarian relief activities and civil security are pre¬sented and discussed. This builds on the experiences gained during the last six years. The active participation in projects like RESPOND, Risk-EOS, LIMES, GMOSS and the International Charter “Space and Major Disaster”, focusing on humanitarian relief and disaster management support has to be seen in this context. In this paper recent examples of rapid mapping products and their importance in disaster management and disaster response for coastal communities are demonstrated. The rapid mapping workflow and the corresponding pro¬cessing and analysis are shown. Examples are given to show capabilities and limitations using earth observation technologies from space after natural disasters or technical accidents, e.g. the devastating tsunami in 2004, the tropical cyclone “Nargis”, Myanmar (2008) and most recently the tropical cyclones hit Haiti in September 2008.