Dear readers,
We're glad to share with you the February 2020 UN-SPIDER Monthly Updates, and would like to make you aware of our latest Recommended Practice, which explains how to detect urban damage, for instance following an earthquake, using Sentinel-1 data, SNAP and QGIS. The step-by-step procedure identifies buildings based on their high backscatter from SAR sensors. This identification process is applied both before and after an earthquake to highlight areas of major building change (i.e. destruction). The information is then overlaid over relevant open-source information to produce useful maps for disaster stakeholders such as major street blockages and heavily hit neighborhoods.
The Recommended Practice can be accessed on the UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal: www.un-spider.org/advisory-support/recommended-practices/building-classification-and-change-detection-using-sentinel-1
Below the updates, you'll also find an events calendar with upcoming conferences, workshops and seminars organized by the community.
Enjoy the read!
UN-SPIDER at a glance
24/02/2020Regional Support Offices involved: Islamic Republic of Iran Regional Support OfficeUN-SPIDER conducted a training programme on Combatting Disaster in Arid Regions Using Space-Based and Geospatial Technologies from 18 to 20 February 2020 in Istanbul, Turkey. The event was the first attempt of broadening UN-SPIDER efforts to include countries in a vast swath of arid regions in Asia and North Africa, and to increase awareness of the need for space technology to combat disasters… Read more
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News from the community
20/02/2020The European Space Agency’s (ESA) GlobWetland Africa project has produced maps that demonstrate how satellite observations can be used for the effective use and management of wetlands in Africa. The project, created in collaboration with the African Team of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, provides national… Read more
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19/02/2020The Mongolian National Agency for Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring (NAMEM) has developed a extreme winter (dzud) risk map for the country using MODIS satellite data, among other resources. The map shows that over 50 per cent of the country are at risk of a severe winter. Following the analysis, the… Read more
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03/02/2020Scientists from 50 scientific institutions, led by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) combined 26 independent satellite datasets to show that the Greenland Ice Sheet melt is increasing. The group studied data from 1992 to 2018, taking direct measurements of the… Read more
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03/02/2020When analysing wildfires and their impacts, remote sensing instruments provide frequent, broad coverage at minimal incremental cost and at no risk, compared with traditional in situ monitoring. Over the past 20 years, the research community has developed tools and techniques to capture key aspects of fire behavior and… Read more
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