Mozambique: UN-SPIDER/UNDP organize Workshop on Disaster Mapping

From 4 to 8 November 2013, eight organizations in Mozambique were trained on “Disaster mapping using space technology”. UN-SPIDER and UNDP-Mozambique jointly organized this training workshop which covered various disaster-related topics in Mozambique, a country that every two to three years suffers from floods and every 4 to 7 years from a drought event.

Experts from the University of Cologne and the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne (both in Germany), National Disaster Reduction Center of China (NDRCC) and from UN-SPIDER (Vienna and Beijing) trained the participants from organizations that are involved in data management of disasters. Topics covered included the use of remote sensing techniques for flood forecasting and flood detection, drought monitoring, rapid mapping of disasters and GIS techniques to evaluate the impact of disasters on the population.

The participants were actively involved in the processing of digital elevation models, rainfall data, satellite imagery and geographic data on infrastructure, utilities and population. The training took place at a computer laboratory of the Eduardo Mondlane University, one year after the mission team of a UN-SPIDER Technical Advisory Mission in 2012 had evaluated the current and potential use of space-based information for disaster management in Mozambique.