From the Introduction by the Board of Editors: For the first time in the four-year history of the UN-SPIDER programme, we are happy to present a volume of Workshop Proceedings. The papers are presented as an online publication on the UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal. The publication contains a number of selected papers which were presented during the sessions of the Fourth United Nations International UN-SPIDER Bonn Workshop, as well as a few additional papers that were submitted by professionals who could unfortunately not attend the event and/or did not have the chance to present their findings to the workshop audience. Nonetheless we found these contributions to be fitting the overall frame of this publication and worth sharing with the interested readership.
The papers are arranged according to the session topics of the workshop, with slight alterations. Accordingly, there are four chapters focusing on International support mechanisms and the SpaceAid Framework, Satellite communication for disaster management, Earth observation and geospatial information in support of risk and disaster management, and the UN-SPIDER Network and its activities. As a general framework, the workshop contributed to the coordination of the various initiatives that are supporting developing countries to access and use space-based technologies for disaster management and risk reduction, and to explore possibilities of capacity development and institutional strengthening.
Just as the workshop participants, the authors of this publication reflect this multitude of stakeholders in the topic of the workshop. The papers reflect the experiences and views of end users, service providers, networkers, and academia. They stem from the private sector as well as public institutions and organizations. They cover topics like information generation and dissemination as well as technical solutions and scientific approaches. The mixture of these different backgrounds provides a valuable overview of the topic of satellite technology for disaster management and gives an insight into the dynamics of the UN-SPIDER workshops that are organized in Bonn, in Vienna, and in other locations worldwide.
The Editorial Board of this booklet hopes, that with the present publication a valid impression of the 2010 Bonn Workshop is provided and that it not only serves as a documentation of a past meeting, but rather as input for future developments. We hope that the products and technologies introduced serve the better information of the end users, and that the reports of experiences and the mentioning of lacks and needs serve as an impulse to the providers.
