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Einar Bjørgo. (2004). Satellite imagery and GIS for disaster response & management in the United Nations: The UNOSAT approach. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2004 – 1st International Workshop on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 105–110). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have the potential to provide United Nations (UN) humanitarian agencies and their partners with much needed disaster related information and improved management of resources. However, the technical nature of these tools requires considerable expertise to fully benefit from satellite images and related geographic information. The UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is implementing the UNOSAT service on behalf of the UN Institute on Training and Research (UNITAR) together with several private actors. UNOSAT provides the UN and its partners with the expertise in Earth Observation (EO) and GIS applications. As a crisis is part of a spectrum of disaster related events, UNOSAT provides services in all phases of humanitarian assistance, including planning, crisis response, relief and development. UNOSAT's objectives are to facilitate the territory planning and monitoring processes of local authorities, local technicians, development project managers and humanitarian field operators working in coordination with or within the framework of UN activities, on issues such as disaster management, risk prevention, peace keeping operations, post conflict reconstruction, environmental rehabilitation and social and economic development. A key part of this work is to accelerate and expand the use of accurate geographic information derived from EO-satellite imagery. UNOSAT is also involved in several international initiatives aimed at improved crisis response and management, such as the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters”, an important asset in providing timely information to relief personnel on the ground. By working closely with its UN sister agencies, UNOPS/UNOSAT offers a one-stop-shop for satellite imagery and GIS services related to disaster response & management within the United Nations. © Proceedings ISCRAM 2004.
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Sébastien Delhay, Mahamadou Idrissa, & Vinciane Lacroix. (2005). PARADIS: GIS tools for humanitarian demining. In B. C. B. Van de Walle (Ed.), Proceedings of ISCRAM 2005 – 2nd International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 213–219). Brussels: Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Abstract: Landmines and UXO (UneXploded Ordnance1) represent a constant and long-lasting threat to the life of millions of individuals. Moreover, these weapons have a strong socio-economic impact on contaminated countries as they involve serious effects as the loss of agricultural fields or access to water. Demining is a critical issue since contaminated areas are large and their clearance often requires investing much time and money into it. It is then fundamental to manage demining activities in an efficient manner. PARADIS 2 is a tool dedicated to Mine Action and helps demining campaigns planners take rational decisions. It fits the needs of all campaign actors, as it is based on the tasks assigned to both the campaign planner and the field operator. The tool is built upon GIS technology and uses satellite imagery as a substitute for background maps, in order to represent all data involved in demining in their most explicit form: a map.
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Petra Füreder, Stefan Lang, Michael Hagenlocher, Dirk Tiede, Lorenz Wendt, & Edith Rogenhofer. (2015). Earth observation and GIS to support humanitarian operations in refugee/IDP camps. In L. Palen, M. Buscher, T. Comes, & A. Hughes (Eds.), ISCRAM 2015 Conference Proceedings ? 12th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Kristiansand, Norway: University of Agder (UiA).
Abstract: Critical information on refugee/internally displaced people (IDP) camps can be provided to humanitarian organisations to support planning of emergency response and relief using multi-temporal and multi-scale information from satellite imagery and GIS data. Since 2011 we are providing Earth observation-based information services to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on demand. A service on population monitoring has already reached an operational stage. Thereby indicators on population are derived by automated dwelling extraction from (multi-temporal) very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery. Based on such information, further added-value products are provided to analyse internal camp structure or camp evolution. Two additional services to support groundwater extraction and assess the impact of the camps on the environment are currently under development. So far twenty-five sites in nine countries have been analysed and more than a hundred maps were provided to MSF and other humanitarian organisations.
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Zainab Akhtar, Ferda Ofli, & Muhammad Imran. (2021). Towards Using Remote Sensing and Social Media Data for Flood Mapping. In Anouck Adrot, Rob Grace, Kathleen Moore, & Christopher W. Zobel (Eds.), ISCRAM 2021 Conference Proceedings – 18th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (pp. 536–551). Blacksburg, VA (USA): Virginia Tech.
Abstract: Ghana's capital, the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) is most vulnerable to flooding due to its high population density. This paper proposes the fusion of satellite imagery, social media, and geospatial data to derive near real-time (NRT) flood maps to understand human activity during a disaster and the extent of infrastructure damage. To that end, the paper presents an automatic thresholding technique for NRT flood mapping using Sentinel-1 images where four different speckle filters are compared using the VV, VH and VV/VH polarization to determine the best polarization(s) for delineating flood extents. The VV and VH bands together on Perona-Malik filtered images achieved the highest accuracy with an F1-score of 81.6%. Moreover, all tweet text and images were found to be located in flooded regions or in very close proximity to a flooded region, thus allowing crisis responders to better understand vulnerable communities and what humanitarian action is required.
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