Earthquake

The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” and the Copernicus Emergency Management Service Mapping have been activated on 29 September after a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in the central Indonesian Island of Sulawesi.

At least 844 people have been killed and 64,000 displaced according to reports.

The cities of Palu and Donggala are the worst affected areas by the earthquake and a tsunami with waves as high as six metres.

The International Charter was activated by the Asian Disaster Reduction Centre (ADRC) on behalf of the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN). Both institutions are UN-SPIDER Regional Support Offices (RSO). Mapping products made available under the activation are available on the…

Close to 2000 landslides were mapped using a high-resolution image of the post 2015 Nepal Earthquake made available through International Charter for Space and Major Disaster, and Sentinel Asia. The images were geo-referenced if not done prior to visual scanning for a fresh scar from landslide and rockslide. Cross-checking with pre-event images most of which are available on Google Earth helped confirm whether or not the event is related to the earthquake. There are many large glacial lakes in and around the earthquake affected region, which was regularly monitored using multi-temporal high-resolution satellite data to pick up signs of potential failure. Mapping of landslide and monitoring of glacial lake using earth-observation data provided much needed situational awareness on the geo-hazard situation.

In order to encourage the targeted retrieval of space-based information and data by disaster risk reduction practitioners, content on the Portal is systematically enriched with metadata. For instance, data sources are marked up with data about their file type, satellite/sensor and spatial coverage and whether they relate to the disaster risk management or emergency response phase. The tool features a range of filters that draw on the metadata, thereby allowing users to narrow down their search, for example, filtering available GIS software by hazard type. This ensures that users efficiently find the content that is most relevant to them. At the same time, the Portal encourages the discovery of resources related to those accessed by the user, by providing links to them on the same page. This allows for contextualisation and highlights links between resources…

Based on optical and radar images of different resolutions, UNOSAT products are also enriched with the available baseline GIS datasets and crowdsourcing data. Satellite-derived analysis performed by UNOSAT is delivered in the form of GIS Data, Static Maps, Live Web Maps, and Reports, and is then shared with a wide range of end-users such as UN Agencies, International Organizations, and Governments.

The Global Human Settlement (GHS) framework produces global open source spatial information about the human presence on the planet over time. This is in the form of built up maps, population density maps and settlement maps. This information is generated with evidence-based analytics and knowledge using new spatial data mining technologies. The framework uses heterogeneous data including global archives of fine-scale satellite imagery, census data, and volunteered geographic information. The data is processed fully automatically and generates analytics and knowledge reporting objectively and systematically about the presence of population and built-up infrastructures.