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.
At the end of 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 you knowledge without breaking social estating restrictions,” said Rhianna Price, Director of Sustainable Development Practices at Maxar. “I think a lot of other people saw leads there. “
An example of such an assignment was to assess the desires for physical care, such as immunization and follow-up care, of mothers and young people under the age of five in rural Peru under 40. Another assignment in South Africa aimed to use satellite photographs as a tool to help identify potential resettlement sites for others living in high-density urban slums thought to be in a specific threat to contracting 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 to respond to crises, it is unclear how knowledge can be further exploited to deal with the many consequences 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 which Cuzco spaces had the greatest threat of infection by overlaying census knowledge on key 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 COVID-19’s reaction had discovered an option for at-risk populations.
“The reaction to the pandemic has evolved, so it’s hard 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 assistance in identifying young people under the age of five living in rural areas who may be in danger of lacking a quarantine of non-coronavirus physical care, such as vaccines or anemia remedy. .
To meet demand, GAL worked with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team open source mapping team to use satellite photographs of Maxar and Microsoft Bing from the city and surrounding areas. They then sent a request to the OpenStreetMap Humanitarian Team Volunteers to map the buildings. They then combined these fundamental maps with knowledge of public fitness knowledge bases to create an interactive dashboard and map that would allow physical fitness to track children’s fitness desires at the home 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 those projects led to actionable data, Ward said the classes can simply be learned.
“His fundamental cards are as intelligent as the knowledge he seeks 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 ground told the local government that it could supply loose oxygen to COVID-19 patients at home if it is possible for the government to only 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 rate and spread, which stakeholders hope government partners can better plan 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 playing a central role, according to Louis Roodt, South Africa’s director general of 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 close proximity, social distancing 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 wonderful surprise, he discovered that he could do many of the box paintings remotely. By zooming in on plants that developed in a fast area, you were able to estimate whether the soil was suitable for construction. Accessibility of a prospective site to infrastructure by tracking road connectivity to hospitals and markets, and you can even identify electrical cables and heavy water pipes to ensure that the prospective site has access to electric 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 painting tactics and strategies that we would have an 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 more easily for professionals running in other facets of progression, from urban planners like him to ministries of fitness, especially in low-income countries that can’t do it, let him.
“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. . »
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