The Sentinel Asia initiative is a collaboration between space agencies and disaster management agencies, applying remote sensing and Web-Geographic Information Systems technologies to support disaster management in the Asia- Pacific region.
Modelled on the Australian Sentinel hotspot system, Sentinel Asia aims to:
- Improve safety in society by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and space technologies;
- Improve the speed and accuracy of disaster preparedness and early warning;
- Minimize the number of victims and social/economic losses.
Sentinel Asia has already been used successfully to support disaster management. Examples include, the emergency observations of bushfires in Victoria, Australia in February 2009, where it helped in the development of hotspot maps to assist emergency response personnel in better prediction and monitoring of fire prone regions. Imagery and emergency observation provided by Sentinel Asia have also been used to support flooding in Pakistan July 2010 and more recently, the Queensland floods January 2011.
Background
|
|
|
|
(Image: JAXA)
|
Statistics from the ADRC-Natural Disasters Data Book - 2007 illustrate that Asia has been seriously damaged by natural disasters over the last 30 years. The region sustained 57 percent of global fatalities and 89 percent of the total victims associated with such disasters.
Under these circumstances, meetings were held to discuss disaster management in the Asia Pacific region. The result of these meetings was the proposal of Sentinel Asia in 2005 to showcase the value and impact of earth observation technologies, combined with near real-time Internet dissemination methods and Web-GIS mapping tools for disaster management support in the Asia- Pacific region. At these meetings Australia was represented by Geoscience Australia, CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.
Geoscience Australia’s Sentinel bushfire monitoring system, through its Web Mapping Service (WMS) and Web Feature Service (WFS), has become a data node of Sentinel Asia providing access to Australian hotspot information.
Description of Sentinel Asia
The main activities of Sentinel Asia include:
- Emergency observation by earth observation satellites upon requests in case of major disasters;
- Wildfire monitoring, flood monitoring, and glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) monitoring;
- Capacity building and human resources development for more effective disaster management
A step-by-step approach was adopted for the implementation of Sentinel Asia as follows:
Step 1: Implementation of the data dissemination system as a pilot project, to form the backbone of the Sentinel Asia and showcase the value and impact of the technology using standard Internet dissemination systems (2006-2007).
Step 2: Expansion of the dissemination backbone with new satellite communication systems, and enhancement of activities based on requirements and experiences acquired during Step 1 (2008-2012).
Step 3: Establishment of a comprehensive disaster management support system (2013 onwards).
To support the implementation of the Sentinel Asia Initiative project, a Joint Project Team (JPT) was formed. Membership of the JPT is open to all the APRSAF member countries, disaster prevention organizations and regional/international organizations that are prepared to contribute their experiences and technical capabilities, and that wish to participate in technical aspects of disaster information sharing activities. Currently, JPT consists of 51 organizations from 20 countries and eight international organizations. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is secretariat of the JPT.
Step 1 has achieved its overall goals. The Sentinel Asia website has been in operation since October 2006. The website has served as a good demonstrator project to share disaster-related information obtained by several Earth observation satellites such as Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS), Multi-functional Transport Satellite 1R (MTSAT-1R), Terra and Aqua. It has also seen the development of advanced web-mapping technologies and ICT systems.
Sentinel Asia Step 2 was intiated in 2008 and is well underway. New Earth observation satellites such as the Korean Multi-purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT of KARI), Thai Earth Observation System (THEOS of GISTDA), and communcations satellites such as the Wideband Internetworking Engineering Test and Demonstration Satellite (WINDS of JAXA) are expected to join. A new framework of satellite data analysis to provide analyzed images and easily comprehensible interpretations from images is currently being developed.
Step 3 will be initiated in 2013.
Sentinel Asia provides disaster-related information, such as satellite imagery and satellite data products on its website at:
http://sentinel.tksc.jaxa.jp/