GRENADE, Spain – Humanitarian workers have long used satellite knowledge as a tool to help coordinate responses to a large number of herbal errors, from floods and hurricanes to epidemics such as Ebola. can simply help governments respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In late March, personal knowledge corporations such as Maxar and open source knowledge cooperatives such as MapAction reported a proliferation of satellite symbol requests from around the world.
“Satellite photographs give her knowledge without breaking social estating restrictions,” said Rhianna Price, director of sustainable development practices at Maxar. “I think a lot of other people have noticed its potential. “
An example of such an assignment was to assess the desires for physical care, such as the immunization regime and follow-up care, of mothers and young people under the age of five in rural Peru, their 40s. a tool to help identify potential resettlement sites for others living in high-density urban slums thought to be in a specific threat to coronavirus.
The successes and shortcomings of these projects can provide classes for stakeholders hoping to leverage satellite knowledge for progression goals.
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Although satellite imagery is widely used in humanitarian contexts for crisis response, it is unclear how knowledge can be used more productively to address the many effects of the pandemic, according to Pete Ward, director of the LAG Center, an educational organization founded in Cusco, Peru.
Then the organizations have experimented. At first, many pilot projects followed a secure strategic logic, he said.
“We started by looking to identify the maximum Cuzco spaces at risk of infection by overlaying census knowledge on baseline maps, and also by combining knowledge sets by adding signs such as population density, drinking water and residents’ age,” he said. .
However, during the time the allocation ended two weeks later and presented the effects to government partners, CUZco’s reaction to COVID-19 had discovered an option for at-risk populations.
“The reaction to the pandemic has evolved, so it is difficult to keep up,” he said.
The organization made the decision to verify anything else. For the next modified edition of the project, government partners requested help identifying young people under the age of five living in rural areas who may not benefit from non-coronavirus physical care quarantine, such as vaccines or anemia remedy. .
To meet the demand, GAL worked with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Open Source Mapping team to use Maxar and Microsoft Bing satellite photos of the city and surrounding areas. They then sent a request to the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Team Volunteers to map the buildings. They then combined those foundational maps with knowledge of personal government fitness knowledge bases to create an interactive dashboard and map that would allow fitness to track children’s fitness desires at the household level.
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The mapping also failed because the databases they planned to use in combination with the basemaps were replaced and incomplete, and it is unrealistic to update the database in the middle of a pandemic, he said.
While none of these projects led to actionable data, Ward said classes can simply be learned.
“Your fundamental cards are as smart as the knowledge you’re looking to overlay,” he says. “If it’s not complete, it probably won’t work. “
It has also become transparent to Ward and other partners that making satellite knowledge useful in an unprecedented crisis would take time, trial and error, he said.
In the end, GAL contributed to the success of a COVID reaction project: supporting the distribution of oxygen tanks to patients critically affected by the virus. An oxygen plant across the earth told the local government that it could simply supply loose oxygen to COVID-19 patients at home if it is possible for the government to handle logistics.
As a component of a multisectoral component, a local organization helped move, fill, and distribute tanks, while LAG used satellite photographs and open source equipment to create a database that mapped the locations of COVID-19 patients’ homes that needed oxygen.
This geodatabase has also been created to paint a broader picture of coronavirus hot spots, adding infection and spread rate, which stakeholders hope government partners can better plan for long-term responses.
“By gathering insights into where other people affected to the fullest live through COVID and understanding their network, we are creating a valuable knowledge base that shows us where oxygen is needed and where the virus is spreading to the fullest,” Ward said.
In South Africa, quarantine and social estating provisions have provided a catalyst for the transformation of crisis control and resettlement plans, with a geo-data formula that plays a central role, according to Louis Roodt, Managing Director of South Africa’s urban and regional plans. organization Promoveo Consult.
“What would have taken us six months in the future took us six weeks from start to finish. “
The Buffalo City government was involved in dense casual settlements being COVID-19 hot spots. Before the pandemic, he had already planned to build new social housing options. However, the coronavirus outbreak has made the structure of these new communities even more urgent, according to Roodt.
“With other people living in such proximity, social estinement is impossible,” he said. “We learned that we had to densify those colonies as soon as possible. “
This presented several challenges. Typically, the pre-planning phase would take six months or more, which would require cash surveys, first in existing amenities to count and perceive the wishes of families that needed to be relocated, and then to construction sites to assess their suitability and connectivity to existing ones, infrastructure, and other services.
“We usually do it all in person,” Roodt said. “But we were under a hard key. I couldn’t even leave my space, so out of necessity, we had to rely on satellite images. “
To her wonderful surprise, she found that she could do many of the box paintings remotely. By zooming in on the plants developing in a quick area, she was able to estimate whether the soil was suitable for construction. Accessibility of potential sites to infrastructure by monitoring connectivity from roads to hospitals and markets, and you can even identify electrical cables and heavy water pipes to ensure the potential site has access to electrical power and hot water.
But what surprised him to the fullest was the effectiveness of this new system.
“What would have taken us six months in the afterlife took us six weeks from start to finish,” he said. “This opens up new paint tactics and strategies that we would have the idea to do in the afterlife. “
In the early days of the pandemic, Roodt and Ward wanted to prove the most useful satellite generation programs to satisfy their express desires.
However, Roodt said this type of experimentation takes place before the crisis occurs.
Currently, lifeguards can access satellite photographs, loose, when a crisis occurs, through systems such as Maxar’s Open Data Wing and the International Charter of Space and Great Disasters.
Roodt would like up-to-date and affordable satellite photographs to be made easier for professionals running in other facets of progression, from urban planners like him to ministries of fitness, especially in low-income countries that cannot. do it, let it go.
“Satellite photographs have great potential for all kinds of applications, but right now they’re underutilized,” Roodt said. “And that’s because the charge is prohibitive. If this generation were more accessible, who knows what kind of answers we could find. . »
Visit the Development Data series to learn more about how to use satellite knowledge for paintings by progression professionals and humanitarian artists. You can sign up for the verbal exchange using the hashtag #DataForDev.