L1 - Introduction of Disaster Management and RS

Question 1

What are the different types of disasters?

Answer 1

Drought
Earthquakes
Fire
Floods
Volcanoes and Landslides

Question 2

Outline the space needs to intervene on Drought.

Answer 2

Is the most damaging of all hazards. Can mitigate with:
• Prediction, monitoring, early warning, impacts, response
• NOAA/AVHRR is main sensor for this: Provides measurements on land and sea surface temp, cloud cover, snow and ice cover, soil moisture and vegetation indices, volcanic monitoring
o Has big swath & low spatial res (1.1 km) cus needs to scan huge areas
• Other sats currently operating are Landsat, SPOT (4&5&6), IRS (Indian Remote Sensing sats: continuously launch new sats), RADARSAT (1&2)

Question 3

Outline the space needs to intervene on Earthquakes.

Answer 3

Need high spatial res (1-2m) to have precise damage assessments (e.g. Quickbird, Cartosat, Spot5)
• Hard to improve prediction of earthquakes with satellites
• Damage info required in almost real time
• Mitigation techniques: Structural tectonics mapping in relation to seismicity
• SAR interferometric techniques are used more and more (e.g. TerraSar-X)
• Reconstruction monitoring

Question 4

Outline the space needs to intervene on Fire.

Answer 4

• Requirement for satellite data: Assessment of fire potential, (dry biomass); location and direction; behaviour/spreading; damage assessment and recovery.
• Develop technologies and method to generate global accurate updatable fire fuel maps.
• Develop mesoscale weather models for daily prediction
• Existing satellite fire detection sensors-NOAA GOES, NOAAAVHRR and DMSP-OLS
• Applications:
o Automated Monitoring and Mapping of Wildland Fires
o Large Scale Fire Mapping & Verification
o Fire Behavior and Modeling (GIS Integration)
o Monitoring of fire hot spots using AVHRR
o Investigation of high res optical and SAR for area burned mapping
o Development and validation of fire area mapping methodology
o Detection and mapping of smoke from fires

Question 5

Outline the space needs to intervene on Floods.

Answer 5

Plain and flash flood events, as well as floods, landslides and mudslides caused by hurricanes and severe storms, are the most frequently mapped disaster using satellite images. Thanks to optical and radar sensors, monitoring floods and their damage is possible at any moment of the day and night, whatever the meteorological conditions.
Need prevention, prediction, mitigation and managing. The EU is currently developing a European Flood Alert System (EFAS)
• Sensors used: SAR and optical- high res IRS data are very useful
• Can have Detailed or Regional Mapping
• Depending on what you want (i.e. prevention, prediction, mitigation and managing) you need different spatial and spectral resolutions. E.g. impact on vegetation requires a big swath with multi/hyper spectral, while damage assessment requires very high spatial res with panchromatic or SAR.
• Flood extent (water bodies)
• Potentially affected areas (flood traces)
• Maximum flood extent
• Flood evolution (monitoring for plain flood only)
• Damage assessment
• Comparison with historical floods (if available)

Question 6

Outline the space needs to intervene on Volcanoes and Landslides.

Answer 6

Volcanic eruptions have a great impact over the areas affected by lava or pyroclastic flows, volcanic ash deposition, lahars or gaseous eruptions. Current remote sensing techniques allow to monitor the dynamics and to support the evaluation of damage.
• Mapping the distribution of volcanic lithologies (lava flows) in remote areas- SAR, Optical
• Mapping geological structures in relation to volcanic vents.
• Identifying potential active volcanoes and large volcanic debris
• Tracking the dispersal of volcanic plumes (GOES)
• Monitoring the thermal characteristics of lava flows and volcanic domes
• InSAR monitoring motion of Landslides resulting from earthquakes and heavy rainfall

Question 7

What are the application gaps for disaster management?

Answer 7

• For disaster warning and response, the rapid response is the most important feature
• There is a need to integrate non-space information with space imagery to be able to quickly move the data in a seamless fashion
• Disaster Management (DM) and Response Agencies (RA) are too busy dealing with disasters and have not had the understanding, resources and time to assimilate space technologies into their operations
• There is a general reluctance among DM & RA to quickly assimilate new technologies
• Space technology, in general, has not been fully demonstrated to be useful to the DM community. Compelling demonstrations can create wider acceptance.