Technical Advisory Mission to Haiti

Technical Advisory Mission to Haiti, 14 to 20 March 2010

The 12 January 2010 earthquake which devastated Haiti, in particular its capital city, Port au Prince, created an unprecedented situation in this country, as national and international agencies were affected to the point that it took several days for the United Nations and international agencies and NGOs to establish a coordination mechanism to respond in an efficient way. The earthquake killed over 220,000 people, injured more than 300,000 people, and left about 1.3 million inhabitants homeless (Haiti PDNA, 2010), leading to the establishment of over 500 camps or shelters. The situation forced the government to request the assistance of the international community to coordinate and manage relief and recovery efforts. Unfortunately, even UN agencies such as OCHA which were already present in Haiti, as well as NGOs such as OXFAM, were severely impacted and lost valuable resources which could be been employed to speed the response and relief efforts.

In its efforts to support the Mission of the United Nations in Haiti (MINUSTAH), UN-SPIDER and the Cartographic Section of the United Nations agreed to activate the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters (CHARTER) within an hour of the event. Through its SpaceAid mechanism, UN-SPIDER also contacted a variety of space providers to task satellites and to generate space-based information which could then be made available through its Knowledge Portal on a dedicated segment for Haiti in the SpaceAid section of the portal (www.un-spider.org/haiti). Within days the dedicated segment began to be filled with links to the products elaborated by such providers, and information on the type of satellites and sensors used to acquire imagery. In addition, by the end of January, two staff members of UN-SPIDER contacted staff of Relief Web in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to deliver over 50 gigabytes of data to be used in Haiti by Relief Web and other UN agencies in tasks such as damage assessments and identification of needs, which found their way into the Post Disaster Needs Assessment report (PDNA).

In addition and recognizing the increasing role of regional and international institutions supporting efforts regarding the use of space-based information, UN-SPIDER, it its role as Co-Chair of the United Nations Geographic Information Working Group (UNGIWG), established an Ad-Hoc Group within UNGIWG to facilitate the exchange of information concerning activities and support provided by these institutions, among them the Cartographic Section, the World Bank, US-AID, US-OFDA, and ITHACA in Italy. The Ad-Hoc Group has widened its role to cover Chile in recent weeks as well.

Recognizing the need to support the Civil Protection Agency of Haiti (CPA), UN-SPIDER conducted a mission with the goal of identifying the needs of this and related agencies to rebuild their capacities to access and make use of space-based information to support all phases of the disaster management cycle. The mission was conducted by  UN-SPIDER between 14 and 20 March 2010. Main tasks conducted during the mission included:

• Meetings with staff from the CPA and CNIGS.
• Meetings with staff from MINUSTAH, MINUSTAH-GIS, OCHA, ISDR, EU-Civil Protection, and NGOs supporting recovery efforts in Haiti.

The mission was complemented with visits to the World Bank, US-OFDA, NASA, and the Thermopylae Sciences and Technology Company in Washington D.C. which allowed staff from UN-SPIDER to coordinate activities identified during the mission with representatives of CPA, CNIGS, MINUSTAH-GIS, and OCHA.