Los satélites de observación son la forma más eficaz de disponer de información. Foto: ESA
The Diplomat. 05/08/2018
Spanish tech company Indra is leading one of the key projects of the Earth Observation for Sustainable Development (EO4SD), an initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA), which will encourage development banks such as the World Bank and vulnerable countries to take advantage of the enormous amount of information collected from space to reduce risks in the face of major natural disasters.
Each year, floods, droughts, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions take the lives of a large number of people and cause multimillion-dollar losses across the planet. The frequency with which these phenomena are repeated increases due to climate change, while the increase in population and the expansion of large cities means that the damage they cause is increasingly serious.
Every year, development banks support thousands of projects from countries that do not have access to private financing. Part of these funds and the technical advice they offer is aimed at post-disaster reconstruction tasks and studies and actions to reduce the possible damage that this type of emergencies can generate.
But all these projects usually encounter the same problem: the lack of reliable information and data. In many emerging countries, there are few or no updated censuses and cartography. When it is available, it does not reflect the reality of cities or regions that grow and change very quickly, with settlements that arise in an improvised manner.
In this context, Earth observation satellites are the most efficient, quick and reliable way to have this information. The industrial team that Indra will lead will approach in the next two and a half years, in collaboration with development banks around the world, some of the most ambitious projects launched by the European Space Agency to date in this field.
The objective is to demonstrate the advantages that space technologies offer when it comes to identifying in advance the risks that natural disasters pose to the population. These large pilot projects will define Earth observation products perfectly adapted to the specific needs of these users and to prove their effectiveness in real sustainable development projects.
