The International Water Management Institute (IWMI), a UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office, has won an award for its innovative work using remote sensing technology to help nations monitor and mitigate the impacts of drought. The Institute received the GeoSpatial World Excellence Award 2020 in recognition of the positive impact of its South Asia Drought Monitoring System (SADMS). Since IWMI launched SADMS in 2014, the system has guided national, state and district-level authorities in India and Sri Lanka to take timely action to prepare for drought.
En décadas recientes muchas comunidades en América Latina y el Caribe han experimentado desastres ocasionados por inundaciones, sequías, deslizamientos, terremotos, erupciones volcánicas y maremotos o tsunamis que han erosionado los logros asociados a procesos de desarrollo. Además, en este año 2020 la pandemia ocasionada por el virus COVID-19 ha impactado a muchos países del mundo, forzando a los gobiernos, al sector privado, a la sociedad civil y a organismos regionales e internacionales a modificar sus planes de trabajo. De manera paralela, varios países del Este de África, del Sudoeste de Asia y de América Latina están experimentando los impactos de la plaga de langosta.
Convencidos que las tecnologías espaciales pueden jugar un papel preponderante en apoyar los esfuerzos que llevan a cabo las instituciones en materia de gestión para la reducción de riesgos, la preparación, la respuesta y la recuperación en caso de desastres; la Asamblea General de las…
read moreGoogle and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have launched a new tool that provides access to multidimensional maps and statistics showing key climate and environmental trends. Earth Map draws on the processing power of Google Earth Engine and aims to help develop insights based on satellite and FAO’s agriculturally-relevant data alike. It follows the joint development by Google and FAO of the Collect Earth platform for forest and land cover assessments, and integrates with the recently launched FAO Hand-in-Hand geospatial platform.
Tapping into the wide range of multi-temporal and quasi real-time satellite data available through Google Earth Engine, Earth Map provides…
read moreThe Federal University of Santa Maria of Brazil (UFSM), in its role as a UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office (RSO), and UN-SPIDER joined forces to conduct a virtual seminar on the use of the UN-SPIDER Recommended Practices to process satellite imagery to map the geographic extent of floods, and to elaborate a series of maps that allow government agencies, as well as regional and international organizations, to assess the severity of droughts in particular years in comparison to droughts in other years. The webinar, conducted on 4 August 2020, brought together more than 30 officers of government agencies of Mozambique, as well as researchers, faculty members and students from various universities.
During the event, researchers from UFSM made participants aware of efforts by the space community to develop drought indices extracted from satellite imagery that assess the impacts of drought on vegetation. They also gave participants a brief introduction to the use of…
read moreThe coronavirus pandemic is compounding the impact of drought, which is already affecting more lives than ever with serious impact on health, the economy and the environment.
Droughts cannot be avoided but their impact can be mitigated by adopting a pro-active approach to drought risk management. In this webinar, a special focus will be given to innovative tools and measures, including monitoring and early warning systems, vulnerability assessment and risk mitigation measures, in the context of the current pandemic.
The UNCCD has last year launched an interactive Drought Toolbox that serves as a platform to provide drought stakeholders with easy access to tools to support the implementation of national drought plans to boost the resilience of people and ecosystems against droughts. As no amount of early warning will work without action to protect the most vulnerable, it is important to combine better forecasts with detailed knowledge on how landscapes and…
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched a geospatial data platform that aims to help build stronger food and agriculture sectors post COVID-19. The Hand-in-Hand system provides access to a wide range of data on food, agriculture, socioeconomics and natural resources.
The platform features over one million geospatial layers and thousands of statistics series related to food security, crops, soil, land, water, climate, fisheries, livestock, forestry and more. It also includes information on COVID-19's impact on food and agriculture. A video describing the tool and its use cases is available online.
The data included in the system has been sourced from FAO and other leading public data providers across the UN and NGOs, academia, private sector…
read moreThe training date is in the past. However, videos and resources of the training can be accessed here.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data can be acquired day and night, even in cloudy conditions, providing a dense time-series suitable for trend analysis and change detection. Environmental applications for SAR data include:
The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) is organising a series of online training sessions on understanding, accessing…
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