The UN-SPIDER Regional Support Office (RSO) in Ukraine is hosted by the Space Research Institute NASU-SSAU. The Institute signed the cooperation agreement with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) during the forty-seventh session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) on 10 February, 2010 in Vienna, Austria.
The Ukraine RSO supports the implementation of the UN-SPIDER Working Plan within the following activities: Horizontal Cooperation, Outreach and Capacity Building, Technical Advisory Support.
SRI NASU-SSAU has conducted a training session on Flood Mapping from Satellite SAR Data at the ISPRS Student consortium and WG VI/5 5th Summer School, 6-10 November 2010 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The RSO provides both operational geospatial services and on demand serviced for local authorities, international organizations and other end-users.
The Earth Observation services include:
- flood extent mapping from optical and SAR imagery
- flood hazard mapping and risk assessment
- deforestation mapping
- agriculture related services, e.g. crop mapping, drought risk assessment
The Ukraine RSO provides products in agriculture and disaster management based on data acquired by Ukrainian Sich-2 and other satellites. It is connected to the World Data System (WDS) through SRI NASU-SSAU.
The Space Research Institute NASU-SSAU (SRI NASU-SSAU) was established in 1996 at the National Space Agency of Ukraine and National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for the organisation of scientific space researches in the country, to conduct and coordinate scientific and engineering activities in the area of peaceful exploration and use of outer space. It is a leading organization in research, development methods and information technologies, as well as in the provision of corresponding services in the Earth observation domain. SRI NASU-SSAU has a strong experience in solving applied problems, regarding agriculture and natural disasters using modern data assimilation and data fusion techniques.
The Institute's main activities are:
- scientific and applied research in outer space, astrophysic research of objects in the universe, including in ranges unavailable from the earth surface;
- development of strategy and principles of universe exploration for scientific and applied issues as well as for the needs of the economy;
- development and testing of scientific space exploration equipment and relevant technological processes in space;
- development of new spacecraft navigation, control systems as well as earth and space monitoring systems;
- creation of information space systems and improvement of existing ones;
- working out suggestions on the conception and strategy for space programmes.
The Institute's main projects includes:
- use of earth remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) for informational support of environmental control;
- monitoring, estimation, and forecasting of underwater petrochemical pollution in Ukraine;
- Interball project on exploration of solar-earth relations;
- Variant project on measurement of electromagnetic field and electric current flows in ionosphere;
- Poperejennia (Warning) project: satellite complex for exploration of ionosphere phenomena related to seismic activity;
- planning and controlling system for science and engineering experimentation aboard the Ukrainian explorer unit of the International Space Station.
