Imagery Pre-disaster Let’s Do Better
This week is the first expert meeting regarding Space Based Technology and Crowd-Sourcing being hosted by UN-SPIDER. I am not attending, but from the Twitter stream (#spidercrowd) it appears there has been a lively discussion on using satellite information and crowd-sourcing for disaster response. What I believe is often missing from these types of conversations is preparedness. Maybe it is presumptuous of me to discuss preparedness when imagery isn’t available freely every time for every disaster.
I’m typing this email from Padang, Indonesia in Western Sumatra. Yesterday I hosted a workshop at the University of Andalas to teach them about OpenStreetMap as part of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s project in Indonesia. This is the fifth workshop I’ve done at a University in Indonesia. Things went well, much like all of the other workshops I’ve given. Students were excited and picked up the tools very quickly. The one difference? Available imagery.
This region of Indonesia is especially vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis, the last major earthquake in Padang was in 2009. In preparing for this workshop series I investigated each area we were going to be working to check for available imagery. For those not familiar OpenStreetMap is allowed to use Bing’s imagery to trace information, this is one of the major sources of imagery for OpenStreetMap. In checking I looked at Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Surabaya. All four of these cities had really night, half-meter or so imagery. In Padang? It appears to just be Landsat. I think this highlights the need for imagery to be available beforehand though. If something major happened here I think it is likely imagery would become freely available. Though creating a detailed map through crowd-sourcing? That would take a week or two and be a huge effort from people that don’t know the area as well as locals. So why not map ahead of time? Imagine the power if after an event the map just had to be updated, instead of created?
There are many different ways imagery could be made available. Providers could donate it, I’m not asking for the shot the day before, fancy brand new imagery. What about imagery that is a year old or so? People purchasing imagery are usually looking for something more recent, the older stuff isn’t as valuable. An imagery fund could be created for preparedness. What about doing a highschool style fundraiser where everyone purchases and adopts a square kilometer? When purchasing imagery those doing the purchasing could negotiate for better terms on it. For example sometimes you can add additional licensees without increasing the cost. What if everyone purchasing imagery at least asked if they could license the imagery also for OpenStreetMap to use to trace vectors? Or an even more liberal license if possible.
I’m interested to hear what others think about this and if there are other ideas. Also don’t worry specifically about HOT’s project in Padang, we were fortunate to be able to purchase imagery. As I suggested about licensing above, we also made sure to extend the license to the government and our partners.
July 6, 2011
Tags: imagery, indonesia, licensing, padang Posted in: hot, license
2 Responses
2 quick points.
I was in the meeting in Vienna this week – presenting, reporting and moderating in sessions. It was a great group of people and it probably was full of experts. The preparedness point was covered quite a lot, but it maybe didn’t come through on the Twitter backchat because it was more in the sessions than in the main group where most of the tweeting was being done. I created a Google doc for one of the breakout sessions and you can see preparedness referenced a bit in that doc. Hopefully UN-SPIDER will open it up more publicly or I can advise how to access it.
There is a project being done by ISPRS and UN-SPIDER called VALID [I joined the project group for a meeting at GI4DM in Turkey earlier this year] http://www.un-spider.org/sites/default/files/VALID_Project_Plan_06_2011.pdf and one of the points they were making is that the business or economic case for disaster preparedness needs some work. It may be obvious to people working in the community, but it’s less obvious to policy makers and budget holders, so hopefully preparedness and investment in imagery and other areas will be supported from the outcomes of this project.
Cheers
Steven
Freeing up older imagery to share for open source projects is a great discussion to further. I would be keen to continue it.
Leave a Reply