Space Technology and Disaster Management

For the monitoring & management of natural or man made disasters sequential information on the changes of nature and the environment is essential. Now a days space technology integrated with GIS has emerged as a most sophisticated information related technology & useful tool in the monitoring and management of environment and natural disaster and hence helps in taking proper measures for pre & post disaster management.

Severity of an event either natural or man-made that causes unbearable harm to the people and goes beyond their capacity to remedy the loss may be termed a disaster. Disasters are of a wide variety depending on the location of a country on the globe. Cyclones, floods, droughts, earth quakes, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, landslides, erosions etc are among the important natural disasters while there are human induced epidemics like environmental degradation, diseases, war etc.

During the past four decades, natural hazards such as dust storms, sever storms and tropical cyclones, droughts, floods, earthquakes, forest fires, and volcanic eruptions, oil spills have caused major loss of human lives and livelihoods, the destruction of economic and social infrastructure, as well as environmental damages. Economic losses have increased almost ten times. During this period. Losses from natural disasters will continue to increase if we do not shift towards proactive solutions. Disaster reduction is both an issue for consideration in sustainable development agenda and a cross cutting issue relating to social, economic, environmental and humanitarian sectors.

Early warning systems must be more than a technological instrument to detect, monitor and submit warning/alert. It should also include risk assessment and combine efforts by all sectors to plan ahead and build people’s capacity to respond rapidly at the local level and more specifically, to identify increasing vulnerabilities in their communities. It need to become part of a management information system for decision-masking in the context of national institutional frameworks for disaster management as part of national and local strategies and programs for disaster risk reduction.

Remote sensing owes much to the satellite technology due to its synoptic, repetitive and multi-spectral nature in observing the surface of the earth be it in connection with the resources or the disasters occurring any where on it. With the advent of satellites cloud movement and formation of cyclones can be monitored, floods can be mapped, agricultural crops can be estimated alongside assessment of damages. The resource survey satellites carry on board sensors that are capable of providing information on every natural feature that prevails on the surface of the earth. The Geographical Information System (GIS) and Earth Observation System (EOS) are another versatile tools added to the new technology which make the data acquired either through remote sensing satellites, aerial photographs or through physical surveys carried out for a purpose to be more useful to the decision makers and the planners. These technological provisions have made planning and development activities more handy towards achieving sustainable development and successful disaster management.

The present world is now a world of information superhighway. High-tech communication system brings everyone very close to each other. It revolutionizes the field of data & information transfer. Disaster management becomes a global issue and of great concern to every nation. So it is now time to launch campaign for greater and consolidated cooperation and collaboration among the countries in this earth.