Advisory Missions
UN-SPIDER aims at ensuring that all countries and international or regional organizations have the capacity to use all types of space-based information to support risk and disaster management efforts. To make sure that all interested stakeholders can benefit from this information in the most effective way possible, UN-SPIDER provides Technical Advisory Support to Member States through missions.
Upon request of a Member State, UN-SPIDER carries out missions with a team of internal or external experts to the host institution to jointly identify the existing national capacity to access and to use space-based information, to analyze the current institutional framework on the use of such information and to shed light on possible constraints and gaps. This support can take many forms: It can be a series of meetings, a workshop or a training, depending on the needs and scope of the request. There are three different types of advisory missions that UN-SPIDER carries out:
Technical Advisory Mission (TAM)
A Technical Advisory Mission (TAM) is conducted to identify the needs of a Member State regarding its capacity to fully take advantage of space-based information. As an inter-institutional fact-finding mission, it is officially requested by the respective national government and is carried out by a team of experts that UN-SPIDER gathers. Typically, TAMs are one-week long missions. The team meets with key disaster management and development authorities in the Government, United Nations organizations, regional and international organizations/initiatives and private entrepreneurs to discuss the use of space-based information for risk and disaster management in depth and to subsequently make recommendations on improvements.
Browse Technical Advisory Missions
Institutional Strengthening missions (ISM)
With an Institutional Strengthening Mission (ISM) UN-SPIDER assists a Member State in increasing its capacity to benefit from space-based information for risk and disaster management. UN-SPIDER strengthens institutional capacities which may suffer from a lack of trained human resource, infrastructure for processing space-derived data or access to such data. ISMs are usually carried out by experts from UN-SPIDER and may include, depending on the situation, experts from other institutions including the UN-SPIDER Regional Support Offices. Examples of these missions include training personnel or facilitating access to infrastructure and data. Usually, ISMs support the implementations of recommendations drawn from UN-SPIDER’s Technical Advisory Missions.
Browse Institutional Strengthening Missions
Expert missions (EM)
Expert Missions have a short-term and exploratory character. As opposed to TAMs which are inter-institutional in nature, an EM usually consists of one expert meeting with representatives of one or more institutions. This expert is in most cases a UN-SPIDER staff. EMs can range from a singular meeting to a several day consultation to discuss one or few specific details. Usually EMs serve to explore the possibilities to conduct a TAM, but they can also be conducted as follow-up activities to such a TAM.