SERVIR-Himalaya launched

The chief of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Charles F. Bolden, along with Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Michael Yates, on Tuesday launched the SERVIR-Himalaya system in Nepal.

Addressing a youth symposium that is being organised by ICIMOD between October 1 and 6, the NASA chief said there is a need for technological advancement to help in the risk management, caused due to climate change and natural disasters in the region. “There is also a need to develop an economic growth strategy to cope with the impacts of climate change in the region,” he said. More details....

Summary of Plenary Session “Regional and Global Initiative: Climate Change and Earth Observation”

5 October 2010 (10:20 – 12:30)
Chair Prof. Jose Achache, GEO Secretariat Director
Co-Chair Prof. Hiromichi Fukui, Keio University, Japan
Rapporteur Olivia Gippner, ICIMOD

Remote Sensing Acitivites in Bangladesh in Support of Climate Change Approach: Regional Database and Framework for Strenghtening Satellite-based Surveillance against Climate Change Vulnerability in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan Region (Muzibur Rahman Howlader, Chairman SPARSO)

The last few years have seen a surge in intensity and frequency of natural disasters in Bangladesh, which have been affecting the livelihood of the people. The high population has led to an overexploitation of the land and has made the country suffer from climate change in terms of cyclones, floods and earthquakes. Bangladesh’s geographic position as a down-riparian country, while at the same time being affected by the downstream upsurge from the Bay of Bengal due to Sea Level Rise, has exposed it particularly. SPARSO is carrying out a variety of Initiatives and space applications, such as the monitoring of disasters and its impacts on resources, agricultural economy and food security; Search and rescue maps; capacity building and collaborations, generation and dissemination of real time data during disaster vulnerability and risk reduction; need-based multidisciplinary methodological development. Most importantly it is assisting the government on satellite data acquisition, agricultural, flood flash flood, water logging and meteorological monitoring, river morphological changes study / river courses, monitoring the changes of water bodies.

During the 1st water summit in 2007 it was decided to pursue a regional approach for deeper research and a Regional Service Platform. This will be a common platform with effective technology and algorithm for acquisition, processing and archival of data. The key for these initiatives are concrete action plans which will enforce implementation.

A plateau-ocean atmosphere water cycle and Field Experiments of the Tibetan Plateau (Xiangde Xu, Chinese Meterological Organization)

The research addressed the curious heat pump effect surrounding the Tibetan Plateau. Furthermore they investigated the main channels of water vapor transport. During his research he managed to explain the effect that the Tibetan Plateau acts as a driving for the monsoon rainbelt. The reasons were identified as the land sea thermal difference between the East Asia continent and the low latitude ocean, as well as the land-air temperature difference.

Earth Observation for climate change: Indian Initiatives (PS Roy, Dean, IIRS, Indian Space Research Organization)

The mission of the Indian Space Programme for four decades has been: “we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society”. The programme has been focused on a very strong partnership with the industry to promote indigenous capabilities. He presented some of the satellite systems used. For example RESOURCESAT -1, which is used to measure for natural resources census, improved crop discrimination, vegetation dynamics, crop yields, disaster management support, forestry and biodiversity etc: INSAT 3A &METSAT (Kalpana 1) are used for cloud and moisture movements. Altogether in the IRS International Ground Stations IGS Network, there are 22 stations and 20 resellers.

Quite timely the IRS is offering a Disaster Management Support programme. Its website Dissemination and Sharing of Geo-spatial Information Derived from IRS Data on Land use and Land cover of India provides a comprehensive database to end users and policy-makers. As a way forward the key words for IRS are scaling up, enhancement, and sophistication.

SUPARCO and its role in socio-economic development in Pakistan (Imran Iqbal, Space Applications and Research, Pakistan)

National Space Agency of Pakistan was set up in 1961 on advice of nobel laureate Dr. Abdul Salam and launched its first scientific rocket, Rehber I, in collaboration with NASA one year later. Very early on it saw its call in connecting space-based information to the socio-economic development of the country. The areas of application were identified as agriculture and food security, environment and climate change, natural disaster monitoring, forestry, water resources, cryosphere (in cooperation with ICIMOD), Urban planningLand use/land cover planning, coastal ecosystem, space based communication services. Examples of such application-oriented work are the programs on crop monitoring through satellite technology, where since 2007 SUPARCO would provide timely estimates to the government for it to react and prepare for surpluses or shortages. Another project was on the dense fog outbreaks in Punjab, the breadbasket of Pakistan. SUPARCO found the fogs to have negative effects on agriculture and even health (eg in Lahore), report will come out in 2010.

JAXA’s contributions to climate change adaptiation and Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (Shinichi Mizumoto, Director, JAXA Bangkok Office).

JAXA started as a university space-related research. Now it has a personnel of 1,565 and a budget of 1.8bn USD, as well as field centers in Washington, Houston, Paris and Bangkok. Within the GEOSS societal benefit priority areas JAXA is working in the fields of disaster, climate and water. Several new satellites are planned for 2012. Some of the activites are its climate change cooperation with NASA, monitoring forests in the amazonas, disaster monitoring earthquake in China (ALOS), flood in Myanmar after Nargis in 2008, GLOF monitoring in Bhutan, 2007, Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), launch in 1997 and many more. It has three space related sub-initiatives, Sentinel Asia, SAFE and STAR. Sentinel Asia is a joint project team bringing together the disaster management community, space community, and international community. It is active in emergency observation, wildfire monitoring, flood, GLOF capacity building and makes use of ALOS, THEOS, ISRO, KARI, TAIWAN, NARLS. New regional WINDS receiving stations and servers are planned for Fiji, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Vietnam. The session was closed by Chairman Jose Achache.

K. Abdul Hakeem

Basanta Shrestha on "Bridging the Data Gap"

SERVIR Himalaya Launch

Regional and Global Initiative: Climate Change and Earth Observation

The SERVIR-Himalaya system was being launched today, 5th October, by Mr. Charles F. Bolden Jr., NASA Administrator, and Mr. Michael Yates, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator of USAID in Kathmandu.

Andreas Schild, Director General of ICIMOD, in his opening words communicated a message from his meeting with the Indian Minister of Environment and Forestry the previous day. First, India is considering ICIMOD as an anchor. Full cooperation of all regional countries and stakeholder is an attainable goal and the window of opportunity is widening.” Secondly, the Minister had emphasized India’s strong support regional cooperation based on strong national institutions.” Schild asked the present organistions to support ICIMOD in its task. He accepted the high obligation that the launch of SERVIR is putting on the organization in serving the stakeholders of the region. “We consider this as a very important and noble task.”

NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. started his speech with sharing his experience from his first space expedition, when looking from a height of 600 km he realized that the world really only is one big body of water, which is only periodically interrupted by pieces of land. He explained how the human induced changes in the world have to be measured using all available knowledge sources. This means to combine space-based satellites with in-situ observations to make earth observation a predictive science. That is why NASA has reinvigorated its applied sciences program – to address immediate needs, nine of which have been identified by Global Earth Observation. He welcomed national cooperation between NASA and USAID and international body of GEOSS, to bring together the world’s earth observation agencies. Bolden closed his speech with the words “From space this is a world without borders – we all have a responsibility to cooperate to making our village, our country, our region and this planet a better place.”

The keynote address was delivered by Senior Deputy Assistant, USAID, Michael Yates. He spoke about the present trend within the US administration. “We are all looking for scientific collaboration as a true game-changer and SERVIR is a step into this direction. It combines NASA’s research and technology experience with USAID’s comprehensive development expertise from working with many partners around the world. “According to him, no single government ministry or organization can tackle all the available information offered in the different areas, “that is why SERVIR is the newest node in the vision of a truly global network. It will be powered by electricity but also by trust. We have to understand how people make decisions and how information can feed into that. That is why SERVIR will also bridge the gap to social science research as well.”

Basanta Shrestha, MENRIS Division Head, ICIMOD, had the floor for his presentation on “Bridging the data gap for climate change adaptation in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) Region” which related the SERVIR launch back to the overall theme of the International Symposium. Upon outlining the major drivers of Climate Change he explained how it is creating a particular strain on the mountain ecosystem and the downstream areas affected. Mountain communities had demonstrated to be slow in adaptation and that is why ICIMOD’s focus and mission for many years has been to increase the adaptive capacity and resilience of mountain communities. “Our understanding on the complexity of the interlinking issues, however, is still at a very early stage and the HKH has been identified as a data gap region”. That is why ICIMOD is directing its various programs at the different aspects of that knowledge gap, just to name a few: Regional snow monitoring, Regional Mapping and Inventory of Glaciers, Mountain Biodiversity, Mountain Socio-cultural Diversity, Regional and national land cover mapping, Capacity building, Rapid response mapping together with JAXA WINDS, Satellite based Forest Fire Detection and Monitoring, Transboundary air pollution, Reaching the Users through the Mountain GeoPortal and GEOSS. “The way forward is through regional and international cooperation which will help build synergies between different initiatives and promote the complementary development of a regional database and Himalayan Spatial Data Infrastructure (HSDI).”

The launch ended in the official opening of the SERVIR-Himalaya Network through the present dignitaries.

For more information on SERVIR Himalaya...

"The future lies in regional cooperation based on strong national institutions," he added.

India's Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh has stressed the need for regional cooperation for the protection of Himalayan glaciers, an official release said Tuesday. Addressing a symposium on 'Bridging the Data Gap for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan Region' in Kathmandu, the minister reiterated the challenges facing the region and the need for solid scientific information as the basis for decision making and improving governance. "The future lies in regional cooperation based on strong national institutions," he added. More details...

Offical SERVIR Himalaya Launch Ceremony