Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Remote-sensing occurs mostly in documents published in Asia, followed by Europe, North America, Africa and MENA with comparatively smaller contributions. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are IGO, Net, RC, State and NGO organisations.

IGO, Net and State documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports published in Asia. Occurrences from RC and NGO were mostly obtained from general documents published in Europe .

Remote-sensing ...

• is a

  • technology

  • field

  • decision support tool

  • discipline

  • technique

• is collected by devices

  • satellites

  • UAVs / drones

  • radar

  • sensors

  • barcode scanners with GPS integration

  • aircraft

• has potential

  • real-time monitoring

  • fast response

• is applied to conflict

  • measuring impact

  • detecting explosives

• is used in agriculture

  • crop risk

  • vegetation density

• is used for operations

  • alternative to access

  • forecasting

  • monitoring

  • risk/needs assessment

  • early warning systems

  • response, recovery

  • management

• is used with the natural environment

  • flood management

  • malaria detection

  • climate variability

  • environmental risk

  • geological survey

  • geographic boundaries

  • watershed, water scarcity, surface water, rainfall, drought

  • biomass, vegetation

  • forest resources, reforestation, illegal forest practices

  • oil spill

• has barriers, stigma & trust issues

• lacks standard methodologies among humanitarians

• is little used in some areas

• is constrained by capacity requirements

• has been implemented with top-down approach, scientific bias

• requires more local integration

• may not be viable in the long-term

• may be limited by weak commitments

The aim was to tackle the role of new technologies (GIS, GPS, mobiles solutions, remote sensing, drones...) in today's and tomorrow's humanitarian intervention.

Strengthening DRR will be facilitated by the accelerated use of various technologies, such as remote sensing, GIS, ICT, risk assessment tools, early warning systems, and weather monitoring technologies.

In addition to grant financing through regional teams, GFDRR supports this work through its Labs team – a distributed network of technical experts in the fields of risk assessment, GIS, remote sensing, and software development.

The Pre-Conference focused on "Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing as a decision support tool for disaster management".

• Disciplines: remote sensing and GIS technologies [....]

GIS data can be collected through secondary (such as global databases) or primary sources using techniques like remote sensing or coordinate capture activities.

Satellite remote sensing in particular is capable of overcoming differences in data availability across political boundaries that have historically hindered monitoring of regional phenomena such as drought.

Remote sensing also includes taking images with UAVs, radar technologies, sensors or barcode scanners that utilise GPS coordinates to track the location of goods, deliveries or people.

• conflict

  • measuring impact

  • detecting explosives

• agriculture

  • crop risk

• operations

  • alternative to access

  • forecasting

  • monitoring

  • risk/needs assessment

  • early warning systems

  • response, recovery

  • management

• natural environment

  • flood management

  • malaria detection

  • climate variability

  • environmental risk

  • geological survey

  • geographic boundaries

  • watershed, water scarcity, surface water, rainfall, drought

  • biomass, vegetation

  • forest resources, reforestation, illegal forest practices

  • oil spill

Better use of remote sensing and open source web technologies can help developing countries to establish better evidence-based systems for disaster risk assessments and to undertake post-disaster needs assessments.

Advice has been given on the use of remote sensing for proxy detection of explosives in vegetation in satellite and aerial images.

Not only does this work assist governments and donors in planning recovery efforts, but it has led to an improved and refined methodology for conducting such assessments in difficult and extreme conditions. This includes using remote sensing and satellite imagery as potential sources of data when teams cannot be present on the ground.

Thailand uses GIS and satellite remote sensing to monitor progress in the country's largest reforestation project. In Thailand's "loves the trees" forestry project (launched at Her Majesty the Queen's initiative in 1999), satellite imagery is used to identify denuded forest areas in five Northern provinces.

The chart below represents the distribution of remote-sensing between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.

These are some of the most innovative technical tools for M&E in insecure settings, and not surprisingly their use poses some of the greatest risks. Although these technologies are ready to use, barriers include the high price of satellite imagery, the fact that many aid interventions do not create physically visible outcomes and the negative stigma of cheaper UAV alternatives (UAVs or other remote sensing technologies can be associated with spying and military attacks. Using them against the will of local authorities or communities can erode trust and put operations and staff at risk). In some instances, geo-spatial information can cause more harm than good. Records of the location of highly vulnerable or persecuted populations not only helps aid organisations, but can risk revealing these same locations to persecutors or other actors with harmful intentions.

It is clear that militaries hold tremendous experience in the research, development and use of UAVs, and will remain an important source of innovation and good practice around this emerging technology for the foreseeable future. Moreover, while the nascent humanitarian and human rights remote-sensing community lacks standard methodologies for analysing the large amounts of geospatial data produced by these new remote sensing technologies, these processes have already been refined through decades of tested military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) doctrine.7

The International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” was set up in 2000. In collaboration with the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the UN Institute for Training and Research’s Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT), it works with space agencies worldwide to make satellite data available for disaster management authorities. Since its inception, the charter has been activated in response to some 330 disasters, from floods and hurricanes to earthquakes and ice jams. National disaster management authorities in countries that are not charter members can also request data, thus maximizing use of the charter’s capabilities and resources to assist affected populations.

However, use of modern satellite and remote sensing technology is still limited, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The charter stipulates that the applicant authority in a country must be able to download and use the maps produced. But many countries lack this capacity. Also, data derived from the satellite imagery would be more useful for disaster response if it were integrated with other layers of geographical data and processed by GIS tools. Such data either do not exist in some low- and middle-income countries, or are not accessible by relief organizations.

These limitations are due to several reasons, all interrelated: socio-economic development and infrastructure; integrated digital data; skilled human resources; political concerns and data security; accountability; and inter-organizational coordination.

Many technical monitoring systems, whether global or national, continue to have a top-down, scientific bias. Warnings based on remotely sensed data or national model- ling can miss important dynamics existing at the local level. A major challenge for all technical warning systems is how to build community-level early warning indicators and indigenous knowledge into the system. Early warning systems for slow-onset disasters such as droughts will not be accurate if they ignore community-level indi- cators. Even for rapid-onset disasters, local indicators can be important elements of the system if properly understood and integrated (see Chapter 2).

The role that Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things can play in supporting a dynamic and common crisis information management system for decision-makers and communities should not be underestimated, either (Lin et al., 2014). The use of remote sensing and wearable sensors could also enable us to see patterns in real-time and speed up response. As technological advances are realized, interactive platforms will enable instant communication and coordination between citizens, leaders and relief organizations. This is of tremendous value when it comes to understanding how disasters are unfolding in near real-time.

Public participation was ensured throughout the entire process of project implementation, allowing herders and local managers to understand and apply sustainable resource management concepts in their businesses. However, despite the long-term contribution to sustainability that the use of remote sensing and GIS technologies could make, the government’s commitment to provide human resources and technological services was weak and outputs were discontinued two years after project completion.

Some studies have found that GISs are often not well integrated with decision-making systems in institutions. This results in pitfalls in implementation of ICTs and their effectiveness. This is a potential problem that needs to be kept in mind when implementing these systems.