Thanks to NextNower Myrna Yoo, Publisher of Imaging Notes, for sharing these articles that are of particular relevance to many of us–the first on global vision for local action, and the second on the peaceful uses of outer space. Both articles are by Ray A. Williamson, PhD, editor of Imaging Notes and Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation, an organization devoted to the promotion of cooperative approaches to space security. From the most recent issue:
For nearly the first three decades of satellite remote sensing, the utility of the data was limited by the expert knowledge of complex software required to make full use of the data’s capabilities. The software and training needed conspired to make this difficult. Even governments and well-heeled companies were slow to incorporate the benefits of this powerful space technology into their operations. However, over the past decade the proliferation of GPS applications and the development of simpler geographic information systems (GIS) tools have broadened the attractiveness of satellite data.
At the same time, in order to keep pace with the competition presented by the digital format of satellite remote sensing, aircraft sensing has evolved to use large digital cameras and radar devices for specialized high-resolution information products, adding new depth to the marketplace. Satellite and aerial remotely sensed data are now much easier to incorporate into business and government processes than ever before.
I would argue, however, that the really big breakthrough in market access to data came with the advent of Google’s Google Earth web application in 2005. Nearly instantaneously, Google Earth brought millions with access to the Internet a quick way to see what their neighborhood looked like from space, or to look back on their childhood home. It also allowed business people rapid access to information about potential future business locations. Yet its real power is in the hundreds of applications that individuals, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and businesses have developed using the application. For example, the website http://www.biblemap.org uses Google Earth to display the places mentioned in the Bible. Also included is extensive information about the site and its relationship to the books of the Bible.
What excites me about the ease of use that Google Earth and Microsoft’s Bing Maps platforms provide is that they supply the stage for involving ordinary citizens in taking better control over their own local environments by using remote sensing to influence policymakers. For example, Appalachian Voices, an envi- ronmental advocacy group in the Eastern United States (www.appvoices.org) has used Google Earth and a plethora of local data gathered by citizens to show the sometimes disastrous effects of mountaintop coal removal on local communities located down slope from the mining operations (Imaging Notes, June 2007).
The key here is the incorporation of local data into the overall picture that Google Earth provides. Ground level digital photographs (another form of remote sensing) and videos (yet another form of remote sensing), and audio clips can be incorporated into the mix of information to provide a compelling and detailed story that policymakers respond to.
What now makes it easy to bring local data into the picture to provide additional granularity to aircraft or satellite images are the many new digital applications, such as SmartPhones, netbooks, and other wi-fi and internet applications. Facebook, Twitter, and other citizen news feeds from the recent unrest in Iran following the disputed presidential election provide ample proof of the power of using these new tools to gather information quickly and efficiently. Need to gather photo data quickly on a given area? Twitter your colleagues to pick up their GPS-capable digital cameras, or better yet their camera cell phones and send you the pictures, with the GPS information built in.
More sophisticated uses could include temperature and pressure measurements, encoded with location and time coordi- nates, obtained from individual mobile phones, and sent to a central location to contribute to the creation of high- resolution weather models of an area. This would be the logical extension of applications like the well-known WeatherBug Internet that relies on weather observations at small weather stations at schools around the United States to provide local weather information.
In another application, students at the International Space University this summer at the NASA Ames Research Center in California developed a SmartPhone application designed to enable the quick and efficient collection of data about urban buildings (number of floors, age, type of construction). The data, which can be collected by a few teams of university students in a relatively short time, would be added to the aerial and satellite data available for Belize. They are intended to be used to populate a World Bank-developed database designed to assist the country of Belize in reducing its risk from natural disasters.
The possible applications of such a mash-up of distributed observations and remotely sensed data from aircraft or satellites are limited only by the human imagination. The importance of such capabilities for enhancing human security cannot be understated. They contribute in two important ways: first, they enable the rapid collection of local information that can provide greater depth to the interpretation and understanding of local and regional environmental and geographical conditions; and second, they enable local people to engage directly with their communities and thereby take greater charge of their own destiny. In recognition of the growing importance of community remote sensing through citizen science and social networking to communities around the world, the 2010 annual IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2010), to be held July 26-30 in Honolulu, Hawaii, has adopted the conference theme of “Remote Sensing: Global Vision for Local Action” (www.igarss2010.org). Indeed the conference will begin with a plenary session entirely devoted to the topic of community remote sensing. IGARSS plenary organizers are soliciting the participation of organizations that are pursuing projects embodying the plenary theme. They will be looking for projects that demonstrate their promise to create either new knowledge or new technologies associated with community remote sensing.
In light of the promise of community remote sensing to improve the delivery of the benefits of space technologies to ordinary people, Secure World Foundation plans to sponsor the IGARSS plenary session.
From the previous issue:
In June 2009, I spent nearly two weeks at the meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which meets in Vienna, Austria annually. In that meeting and the associated Scientific and Technical (S&T) Subcommittee and Legal Subcommittee meetings held earlier in February and March, respectively, delegates from 69 States met to share information, work out cooperative programs, and study legal problems that arise in the exploration and use of outer space.
In 1967, COPUOS, which was set up by the U.N. General Assembly 50 years ago, worked out the international treaty that provides the legal underpinnings of all space activity, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, otherwise known as the Outer Space Treaty (OST). This is the treaty that makes remote sensing of Earth’s environment and human activity on the planet truly useful.
The first two articles of the treaty contain the following key statements:
o Article I: outerspace, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all states without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.
o Article II: outerspace, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
Although States still cannot agree on precisely where air space ends and outer space begins, all are nevertheless bound by the treaty, which entered into force at the time of its inception in 1967, and no State can successfully claim jurisdiction over parts of orbits that pass over its territory. This provision helped keep the peace during the depths of the Cold War by allowing U.S. and Soviet satellites to pass unhindered over each other’s territories, providing verification of the number and placement of ballistic missiles in each country. This same provision, of course, makes possible the operation of the many different types of Earth observing satellites that countries and private companies operate today.
This year, during both the S&T Subcommittee meeting in February and the plenary meeting in June, I was struck especially by the frequent mention of Earth observations and the benefits they provide. According to statements offered at these meetings, many member States make enormous use of Earth observations data to support different aspects of human and environmental security needs. Others, however, spend more time focused on the need to build capacity for employing the data effectively.
What might surprise many readers is the fact that the United Nations itself employs the data gathered by different countries to support public needs, from tracking the spread of vector-borne disease to responding to natural disasters. According to the United Nations, about 24 U.N. entities make routine use of space applications, mostly employing information derived from Earth observations data. Investigating these uses in detail takes one into a dizzying array of acronyms, all beginning with the letters U.N.
U.N. High Commission for Refgees (UNHCR)
The United Nations’ broad use of Earth observations follows from the broad scope of the United Nations’ mandate, which covers most human and environmental needs, with a special emphasis on the needs of citizens within developing States. For example, this year the offices of the UNHCR began a pilot project on the use of aerial and satellite imagery for studying human migration, which is most often seen in internal displacements such as has taken place recently in Pakistan as serious fighting began between the Pakistan Army and the Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley of Pakistan.
The UNHCR study will compare current and past satellite images, mapping changes in land use and determining patterns of natural resource extraction. The organization will also map refugee camps in order to facilitate delivery of humanitarian aid to the inhabitants. Mass population dislocations can exact a considerable toll on the environment. Such studies can be enormously useful in helping UNHCR to develop appropriate methodologies for finding appropriate sites for refugee camps, in addition to aiding the delivery of food, water, and services to refugees.
Refugees in urban settings pose a particular challenge to aid agencies because of the density of habitation. UNHCR has used satellite imagery to help map refugee populations in the sprawling cities of Cairo, Damascus and Nairobi.
U.N. Building in Vienna, Austria. Photo credit: Agnieszka Lukaszczyk.
U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT)
Another element of the United Nations is the U.N. Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT). Since its inception, UNOSAT has developed more than 900 operational maps and associated analyses to assist human security and humanitarian assistance. UNITAR provides applications training related to peacekeeping and preventive diplomacy and also supports training for local authorities in disaster prevention and vulnerability reduction.
U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)
In addition to these efforts, the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) makes extensive use of NOAA’s National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (NPOES) imagery to warn farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa of impending drought or rainy seasons.
Major Need of Capacity Building
In making effective use of Earth observations data, developing countries face the severe difficulties of a lack of training in the effective use of satellite data and of appropriate computer hardware to operate the necessary analytical software—in other words, they need training in capacity building. Hence, in the past two decades, the United Nations has created or assisted in the development of a number of U.N.-affiliated organizations to provide training. For example, the U.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), which also serves as the secretariat for COPUOS, holds a series of training seminars and conferences each year in developing countries.
Finally, the United Nations was instrumental in setting up training centers for space science and applications in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These affiliated training centers offer a variety of courses in order to strengthen the space capabilities of their regions. Africa hosts two regional education centers, the African Regional Center for Space Science and Technology Education, one in French in Rabat, Morocco, and one in English in Lagos, Nigeria. Between them, these two centers serve respectively the Francophone north and the largely English-speaking south of Africa.
The single Asian Center for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific is located in the campus of the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun. In Latin America, the Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Latin America and the Caribbean boasts two locations: one in Puebla, Mexico, on the campus of the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics, and another in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in the facilities of the National Institute for Space Research. All of these centers provide, among other courses, significant training opportunities in the processing and interpretation of Earth observations data, centered on the regions they serve.
The organizations that I have highlighted provide only a partial view of the extensive use of satellite Earth observations data and information that the United Nations as a whole applies to its work on behalf of the developing world.
Nevertheless, this list illustrates just how embedded these capabilities are in the U.N. system. It also illustrates just how far we have come since NASA launched its first electro-optical satellite, Landsat-1 (originally called Earth Resources Technology Satellite, or ERTS) in 1972. Although at the time some U.N. officials could see the promise of the technology for development and for managing Earth’s resources, I suspect that few imagined that Earth observations technologies would evolve into these U.N. workhorses. Nevertheless, there is still a deep need to build the capacity for making effective use of the data, and the United Nations has taken that need to heart.
For further information please consult the many reports that can be found at: www.oosa.unvienna.org/oosa/en/ COPUOS/copuos.html.<<
I want to inform you that we have decided to postpone indefinitely the Washington conference Feb. 28 – Mar. 3. There is simply not a critical mass of receptivity at this time for the kind of “Climate Summit” we have designed, which has emphasized an integral approach to climate change and the need for an “urgency coalition” to come together to take immediate and decisive action to resolve the climate crisis
State of the World Forum will in time convene a Climate Summit in Washington but that time is not now. We need to put our energy elsewhere. While a single conference has been postponed, the over-all strategy of the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign will continue to unfold. We believe that the process in which we engaged, the dialogue that transpired, and the contacts and partnerships that we developed around the event, will prove to be tremendously valuable as we move forward.
More broadly, we must recognize that Washington is not alone in its inability take serious action with regard to global warming, especially in the aftermath of Copenhagen. The net result of COP 15 was the collapse of the Kyoto Accords and the attempt to get the nations of the world to agree on common goals, fair financing, and a realistic timeframe. The only agreement to emerge seems to have been a vague commitment to share information, with each nation now basically on its own and free to set its own goals, timeframes, and standards.
We thus move into 2010 with the climate crisis intensifying but climate politics adrift and civil society as disorganized about what to do as our governments, and not only in the U.S. but worldwide, with precious few exceptions. There is enormous work to be done both at the level of strategy and at the level of engaging in concrete actions that actually make a difference.
Of course many other nations besides Brazil are taking leadership. Costa Rica and Sweden have made dramatic commitments, and the EU is committed to making progress. China has become the world leader in clean technology and is on an aggressive march to develop renewable energy. Bolivian president Evo Morales is convening a post Copenhagen gathering in that country in April. All these efforts, and many others, are deserving of support. As possible, we should be convening 2020 Campaigns and events in countries developing dynamic progress and action.
