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Satellite Data to the Rescue: Burma
Satellite data is at the centre of international efforts to provide relief to millions of Burmese devasted by Cyclone Nargis. Relief organisations such as Direct Relief International are using Google Earth as a planning and management tool, while agencies including the United States Geological Survey are providing satellite imagery to aid rescue and recovery efforts.
On 3 May, tropical cyclone Nargis swept over Burma (Myanmar), pummelling the country with winds reaching speeds of more than 200 kph and a storm surge that climbed 3.6 metres. It is the deadliest cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people perished in Bangladesh.
| Before and after the storm. Satellite imagery has been integral to the international relief effort in Burma, where some sources place the death toll at more than 200,000 and rising. The United Nations estimates that up to one million people could be homeless. |
After finally admitting relief workers into the country on 18 May, Burmese officials have agreed to raise the official death toll to almost 78,000, with 56,000 listed missing. Other sources place the death toll at more than 200,000 and rising, while the United Nations estimates that up to one million people could be homeless and two million at risk of starvation and disease. In some regions, more than 90 per cent of housing and large parts of infrastructure have been destroyed.
Satellite maps show that the storm's damage was concentrated over an area of about 30,000 sq km, stretching along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines. This area is home to nearly a quarter of Burma’s 57 million people.
Scenes captured by Geoeye’s Ikonos satellite on 7 May illustrate the destruction brought to Burma when the cyclone made landfall. Pre-impact images of a tiny village located about 27 km south of Yangon (also called Rangoon), the country’s largest city, show trees and buildings surrounded by fields of crops. In post-impact images, piles of rubble replace the trees and buildings and the fields are largely submerged under floodwater.
On 8 May, NASA released data on rainfall accumulation left by Cyclone Nargis. According to analysis of images from NASA’s Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, rainfall accumulation along Cyclone Nargis’ path between 27 April and 4 May reached six metres in the worst-affected areas.
‘The first area of 600 mm rainfall totals occurred over the open waters of the Bay of Bengal, as the storm was intensifying from a tropical storm to a Category 2 cyclone. Nargis weakened to Category 1 as it moved east-northeast toward Burma, but by 2 May, it had re-intensified.
‘When it made landfall over the Mouths of the Irrawaddy River, it was a borderline Category 3/4 storm. Here, Nargis inundated a second area with up to 600 mm of rain.
‘When the skies cleared on 5 May, satellites observed widespread flooding over thousands of square kilometres,’ the report said.
The United Nations Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) has used USGS-supplied Landsat satellite imagery to assess the extent of flood damage. UNOSAT is a United Nations program thar provides satellite imagery access and GIS services for humanitarian relief, disaster prevention and post-crisis reconstruction.
USGS says the first maps of the area derived from the NASA satellite were provided to awaiting agencies within hours of their initial request.
Images captured by Landsat on 12 May show Yangon, which is tucked into a ‘V’ between two rivers that empty into the Gulf of Martaban, almost entirely covered in standing water. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), destruction on this scale occurred throughout the Irrawaddy Delta, where 90-95 percent of the buildings were destroyed.
UNOSAT is also working with ‘Respond’, a GMES project that provides geographic information services to the humanitarian aid community. Respond is working alongside UNOSAT on the production and delivery of maps for the affected regions. The project is co-ordinated by a management team from Infoterra Ltd.
Through Respond, mapping of the 'Irrawaddy Division' was delivered on 10 May using radar satellite data in order to see through cloud and capture the extent of the devastating flooding.
Production of additional radar mapping of the flooded regions is currently underway following reports that further bad weather is forecast for disaster-affected areas. Analysts will use these maps to monitor the flooded areas. They will try to determine if the water is receding and how much the expected heavy rain is likely to exacerbate the situation.
USGS and Infoterra provide imagery to participating agencies under the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. Since its establishment in late 2000, the Space Charter has responded to more than 200 disaster events around the globe. It is made up of an international group of space agencies that provide satellite images to organisations assisting natural or human-induced disasters. The OCHA engaged the help of the Space Charter on 4 May.
In Germany, the Centre for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) has produced maps and flood analysis of affected areas based on data of the radar satellites TerraSAR-X (DLR/Infoterra) and the PALSAR instrument on JAXA's Diachi satellite. This data is being used to support the activities of the World Food Programme and OCHA.
Other relief organisations, including UNOSAT and Direct Relief International, are using Google Earth as a planning and management tool.
‘Layering their own data along with data provided by organisations, such as ReliefWeb, over the 3D terrain and satellite imagery of Google Earth allows them to visit places virtually and get a unique feel for them before they actually get there,’ said Christian Adams from Google Earth Outreach.
The chief operating officer of Direct Relief International, Annie Maxwell, said in a blog posted on Google that the organisation used geospatial information in conjunction with situation reports from the field to more efficiently target our assistance.
Maxwell explained how the aid organisation used Google Earth to help target medical assistance in both ongoing and emergency relief efforts.
'As part of our response to Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma), we plotted all of the Myanmar Ministry of Health facilities (over 700 sites) using data from the World Health Organisation 2002 Global Health Atlas survey,' she said.
Direct Relief’s KML file combines layers to show where their partner health facilities are located in relation to the areas affected by the cyclone. Colour coding enables users to easily and quickly differentiate between larger hospitals, specialised medical units and clinics/rural health centres.
'By combining layers we can focus our response on those points of access to healthcare that are serving the most affected communities,' she said.
UNOSAT data on the path of the cyclone and the extent of the flooding is also available in a layer for Google Earth.
Google Earth has collected all the layers created since the cyclone hit into a single freely-available KML file. Among the data included is satellite flood analysis from MODIS, satellite flood maps from ZKI and maps indicating the location of Myanmar Ministry of Health facilities.
The master KML includes post-cyclone imagery from the GeoEye-1 satellite supplied by Singapore’s Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing, and pre- and post-cyclone imagery from MODIS. Satellite data for the file has also been supplied by DigitalGlobe, TerraSAR-X and SPOT Image.
