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An Open-ended Intergovernmental Expert Working Group on Indicators and Terminology was established by the UN General Assembly in June 2015, as a way to steer efforts regarding indicators to assess advances in the context of the seven targets established in the Sendai framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030. The experts in this OEIWG are nominated by Member States (countries). By June 2016, 255 experts form 107 Member States have been nominated to participate in the OEIWG.

UNDRR organized the third meeting of the OEIWG in September 2015 to examine and discuss the indicators to monitor the 7 Global Targets established on the Sendai Framework. The whole document is available ...

The Sendai Framework includes a call to update the disaster risk reduction terminology.  A special group has been set up to steer this effort.  The Office for Disaster Risk Reduction of the United Nations published the results the latest deliberations of this group in a background paper which aims to provide information that contributes to the implementation of the Sendai Framework.

The document offers information on the historical development of the Disaster Risk Reduction Terminology produced by the UNISDR which started in 2002 and has continued till recent years. A review process of the “2009 UNISDR Terminology” started in 2014, supported by the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG) and its member the European Commission Joint Research Center (EC-JRC) and their partners.

To access the complete document, including the methodology, consultation process and results, and the updated terminology, click...

Le Cadre d’action de Sendai comprend un appel à la mise à jour de la terminologie de la réduction des risques de catastrophe.  Un groupe spécial a été mis en place pour piloter cet effort.  Le Bureau de la réduction des risques de catastrophe des Nations Unies a publié les résultats des dernières délibérations de ce groupe dans un document d’information qui vise à fournir des informations qui contribuent à la mise en œuvre du Cadre d’action de Sendai.

Le document fournit des informations sur l’évolution historique de la terminologie de la réduction des risques de catastrophe produite par l’UNISDR, qui a commencé en 2002 et s’est poursuivie jusqu’à ces dernières années. Un processus de révision de la « terminologie UNISDR 2009 » a commencé en 2014 avec le soutien du Groupe consultatif scientifique et technique (STAG) et de son membre, le Centre commun de recherche (CE-CCR) de la Commission européenne et de leurs partenaires.

Pour accéder au document complet...

On the 17^th of July 2016, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) captured images of the Hurricane Darby and Tropical Storm Estelle.

Those two natural phenomena follow previous ones which also occurred in the eastern Pacific Ocean named Agatha, Blas and Celia. If those different disasters did not perpetrate any damage and remained above the water, they are part of the hurricane season in Eastern Pacific which appears every year. 

The Atlantic hurricane season takes place every year from the 1^st of June to the 30^th of November . This year, activity in the Atlantic basin began unusually early with the development of Hurricane Alex in the eastern Atlantic in January. The National Hurricane Center said it was the earliest hurricane to form in the Atlantic since 1938.

The NASA satellites provide information on cloud extent, sea-surface temperatures, geographic locations and rates of rainfall within each storm, and even surface winds. All of that information is used to create daily hurricane updates and its very useful in early warning systems and in disaster preparedness efforts.

NASA has many resources covering 2016’s Atlantic Ocean and Central Pacific hurricane seasons which are now...

The European Commission and the United States confirmed a new agreement to facilitate data sharing from the Copernicus constellation of Sentinel Earth Observation satellites among a broad spectrum of users on both sides of the Atlantic. The treaty was signed on 16 October in Washington.

Earth Observation for different purposes is the main goal of the new cooperation policy. Climate change research, enhance forecasting, ocean and atmospheric monitoring, land use management and mitigation of natural disasters are some of the focus areas.

This new agreement will benefit institutions such as the European Commission, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Oceanic and Atmospherics Administration (NOAA); and the U.S Geological Survey (USGS). It enables representative institutions from both sides to access full and...

Dr. Mohammed Al Ahbabi, Director General of the United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAE) reinforced the agency’s commitment to strengthen international collaboration through space agency cooperation for the use of space assets in environmental research. 

In his speech at the Eye on Earth Summit 2015 in Abu Dhabi, Dr. Mohammed Al Ahbabi highlighted: “Space assets are our ‘Eyes on Earth’ and enable us to perform Earth Observation. GNSS and satellite communications are indispensable tools for environmental monitoring and management and help pave the way for a sustainable, safe and ecologically balanced environment.” 

Dr. Mohammed Al Ahbabi further emphasized that the mandate of the UAE to promote earth...

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will develop an open-access database using satellite information to support water-scarce countries in the Near East and North Africa, where droughts and food security are major issues. The portal’s objective is to gather and assess satellite data in order to enhance land and water productivity, and to foster the sustainability of agricultural systems. Its development will presumably begin in October 2015.

This new four-year  project will be carried out at three spatial scales: the continental level over the whole of Africa and Near East, country and river basin level and, irrigation scheme level. Additionally, FAO will provide technical support in land monitoring and water productivity, identifying productivity gaps, suggesting solutions and contributing to a sustainable growth in agricultural production.

The project is funded by the Government of the Netherlands and FAO will be in charge of its implementation...

NASA has began to build its new satellite mission focused on predicting hurricanes, called Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), with the collaboration of the University of Michigan. It will comprise eight Earth observation (EO) microsatellites which will be able to measure ocean surface winds associated with tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes throughout their life cycle. Their launch is expected in late 2016 from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The satellite constellation will offer a new image of wind speeds over the entire tropics every few hours, instead of the current space artifacts that provide them every few days. Moreover, it will be able to monitor and forecast swift changes in wind speeds, hurricane intensity and storm surges.

The CYGNSS mission passed two NASA examinations and the assembly of the first microsatellite began last August 14. Each satellite would weight roughly 64 pounds (29 kg) and measure approximately 20x25x11 inches (...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a report in which the quantity of carbon dioxide and other pollutants produced by fires that remains in the atmosphere has been determined.

The estimation of the polluting emissions into the atmosphere is possible thanks to the data produced by computer models that combine satellite observations of burned area and active fires together with information about vegetation, fuel loads, and other details. Only the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometers (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua and Terra satellites detect approximately 10,000 active fires on a normal day of August.

Some of the conclusions of the report are summarized in NASA’s website: “In 2014, fires released about 2,030 teragrams of carbon into the atmosphere. That’s just slightly below the...

The WorldView-3 satellite sensor has completed a successful year in orbit after its launch on August 13, 2014. During this year it has contributed to disaster and humanitarian efforts in critical situations such as the earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015.

The advanced fourth-generation satellite WorldView-3 was licensed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and contributed to DigitalGlobe’s constellation being its first super-spectral and high resolution commercial satellite.

The satellite sensor’s characteristics include 30 cm panchromatic resolution that collects five times more data than 70 cm imagery; Short-Wave Infrared bands (SWIR) that allow for accurate imaging through haze, fog, dust, smoke and other air-born particles; and eight multi-spectral bands.

These particularities have enabled the contribution to relief efforts in different natural and humanitarian disasters. In response to the 2015 Nepal earthquake...

Sea-level rise is increasing the risk of flooding in coastal deltas, a recent study has shown. Global datasets help estimating how and where delta flood risk will be higher.

Deltas are prone-flooding areas where over 340m people have established their home, now future sea-level rise associated with climate change is representing a greater risk for them. The threat to all coastal communities around the world has increased in the deltas due to their exceptional geological characteristics.

A suite of global datasets has allowed a group of researchers to estimate how and where sea-level rise and land subsidence, a combination called relative sea-level rise (RSLR), will intensify delta flood risk. The highest risk increases are found in the Krishna (India), Ganges-Brahmaputra (Bangladesh), and Brahmani (India) deltas.

However, the study also includes deltas of low risk such as Mississippi (US) and Rhine (...

There is a need for wider coordination between conservation organizations and space agencies to decide which variables tracked from space can be useful in order to monitor changes in biodiversity on a global scale. It is crucial to identify these changes as they may very well have impacts on the occurrence of natural disasters, such as droughts, landslides, floods and wildfires. 

Although the definition of biodiversity and the factors that influence it seem clear, it is difficult to quantify, as it cannot be reduced to physical units. Moreover, scientists have tried to set variables for measuring biodiversity but they faced additional problems, as the lack of access to data, uncertainties in the continuity of observations and limitations of satellite imagery. Remote sensing through satellites can track vegetation coverage, monitor agricultural activity, soil moisture, measure height, rainfall and...

A joint study by Cornell University, Princeton University and The Aerospace Corporation found that the current portfolio of rainfall satellites is insufficient to meet information needs for global flood monitoring, and that further loss of satellites would dramatically worsen data coverage.

According to the authors, there are currently 10 rainfall monitoring satellites, but four of them have become obsolete and the rest are reaching the end of their lifespan. However, no specific plans exist to replace them with new satellites that measure real-time rainfall. This is a major problem as the data captured by these space artifacts is essential for flood management: the information is introduced into sophisticated models to forecast the timing and intensity of floods, allowing governments to take action to mitigate the impact of flooding.

Even with the current set of 10 rainfall satellites, there...

As ESA announced, the Meteosat Second Generation-4 (MSG-4) captured its first image of Earth yesterday, 4 August. At the same time, international satellites were providing critical information about the Super typhoon Soudelor’s, which is affecting the Pacific Ocean. These two events highlight the constant role Earth observation is playing in monitoring and forecasting climate events.

The first image captured by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on MSG-4 has confirmed that Europe...

NASA will release on August 2015 the first Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data, the beta version of L1 radar and radiometer data. The SPAM mission was developed in order to record surface soil moisture measurements with high levels of accuracy and resolution.

It will improve weather and climate forecasts, flood predictions and drought monitoring systems. The measurements provided by the SMAP global mapping open a new path for monitoring the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere.

As explained on the website...

A new app called Field Notes, developed by the mapping technology company Esri, allows identifying the impact of climate change in the surroundings of the user's area.

This new product could help governments, academics and policymakers, among others, to prepare for the upcoming events caused by climate change. At the same time, it creates a higher understanding about the world and the ongoing changes.

The project offers precise geographic information about any location on the globe. This includes the risk of natural hazards and could for instance describe how far...

DEVELOP, NASA’s Applied Sciences’ Capacity Building Program, organizes a Virtual Poster Session (VPS) for this summer 2015 where participants can send their projects on Earth observation (EO), disaster risks, water monitoring, mapping invasive species distribution and environmental concerns. It features 178 researchers across 15 DEVELOP locations, who carry out 38 projects.

The participant projects need to analyse societal and scientific dilemmas and discover ways in which these issues can be better forecasted, monitored or mitigated through the application of NASA EO.

The competition consists of two rounds. The first round is between July 31 and August 11, and the second one between August 14 and 25. The participants will have dialogue with Earthzine readers in a blogging competition sponsored by Esri. After the first round, judges will choose a project in each category and after the second one they will elect the grand-prize winner on August...

A new joint study between the U.S. Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Interim Reanalysis (ERA-Interim) reveals that fire seasons have lengthened between 1979 and 2013. Moreover, the researchers also discovered that tough fire seasons have become more frequent during this period.

This analysis was carried out by using satellite data on maximum temperatures, minimum relative humidity, the number of rain-free days, and maximum wind speeds. All are meteorological variables that have an effect on the length of fire seasons, especially if high temperatures, low humidity, rainless days, and high winds come together.

According to the research’s main maps, the areas most affected by extending fire seasons were western United States and Mexico, Brazil, and East Africa, where...

The Sentinel-5 Precursor will start its testing phase leaving from the UK, before its launch from Plesetsk, Russia in April 2016. The Sentinel-5 Precursor is using the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROMPOMI) and it has been developed by Airbus Defence and Space Netherlands for the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Netherlands Office.

The new aircraft will provide atmospheric chemistry data for the global monitoring programme for environment and security, Copernicus.  It aims to take a higher resolution of measurements of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, methane and other atmospheric pollutants. This information will enable improved climate models and weather forecasting to be made.  

It will also contribute to fulfill the goal to safeguard the civil population, to manage risks, and protect the environment as part of the efforts of the European institutions and public authorities at supplying geo-information products and services on the use of...

A recent study partly based on data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) has highlighted the risk of using groundwater basins for human consumption without a concrete knowledge about the remaining quantity of water.

The pair of satellites GRACE, that measures small changes in mass and gravity near Earth’s surface, has allowed scientists to observe water mass and its gravitational tug. This way they were able to follow the movements of water around the planet.

Due to the impact that running out of supplies in the current primary source of freshwater for approximately two billion people could cause, the limited knowledge on the state of large groundwater systems becomes an important risk. The research team found that the quantity of freshwater in around one third of the aquifers in the world has been...

Researchers at London’s Global University (UCL) and the University of Leeds discovered that the volume of Arctic ice increased 33% between 2013 and 2014 due to an unusually cool summer in 2013. The study, published in Nature Geoscience and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), was carried out by using 88 million measurements of sea ice thickness recorded by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) CryoSat-2 mission between 2010 and 2014.

Between 2010 and 2012 the satellite results indicated a 14% reduction in the summertime Arctic ice volume but it was 41% higher in the summer of 2013 than in the previous year. This suggests that  Arctic sea ice may be more resilient than previously thought and is more sensitive to changes in summer melting than to winter cooling.

CryoSat-2 is an environmental satellite launched by ESA in 2010. It provides scientists with data about the polar ice caps and tracks changes in the thickness of...

ALSAT-2A, the optical Earth observation satellite of the Algerian Space Agency (ASAL), Regional Support Office of UN-SPIDER, reached five years in orbit on July 12.

After these successful five years, it will continue developing observation activities, providing panchromatic images with 2,5m resolution and multispectral images with 10m resolution.

Since the launch of ALSAT-2A in 2010 on a PSLV launcher (PSLV-C15) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota, India, the satellite has provided more than 120,000 Earth observation images, covering a total of more than 8 493 millions km2. The coverage over Algeria represents almost the 50% of the totality and the whole African continent reaches 73,5%.

Early warning, disaster management and emergency response have been some of the most important activities developed by ALSAT-2A during these five years. 

NASA has funded a new satellite-based fire detection tool in operation now at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service (USFS).

The new tool uses high-resolution data from the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite with a cutting-edge computer model to predict how a fire will change direction based on weather and land conditions. It will allow detecting smaller fires with precise detail and will help firefighters developing their tasks.

As explained in NASA’s website, “compared to its predecessors, the enhanced VIIRS fire product enables detection every 12 hours or less of much smaller fires and provides more detail and consistent tracking of fire lines during long duration wildfires – capabilities critical for early warning systems and support of routine mapping of fire progression.”

“The high-resolution data gleaned from VIIRS [Suomi NPP’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite] are...