Cyclone Relief Efforts Get High-Tech Help

May 8, 2008 — -- As cyclone recovery efforts begin in a rural third-world country where even owning a cell phone is illegal, relief organizations turn to high-tech helpers: satellites.

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar over the weekend, and with a death toll that could approach 100,000, it is now set to become the most devastating natural disaster since the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia in 2004. The country's government has, so far, stymied relief efforts by refusing to approve visas for many workers at worldwide relief organizations. But that hasn't stopped those workers from using high-tech methods to prepare for getting aid to the devastated region.

When the disaster hit, UNOSAT (the UN Institute for Training and Research Operational Satellite Applications Programme) began working on procuring the first satellite images of the Myanmar devastation. The images, according to Einar Bjorgo, the head of UNOSAT's rapid mapping unit, were dramatic.

Some areas were totally flooded -- some large villages had completely disappeared.

"These clearly showed the larger area that was totally flooded," Bjorgo said. "We compare it with an archive image of the flood [area], and then we can derive from that the flood extent and the search area."

UNOSAT, which is supported by the United Nations and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), gets free space imagery through the so-called International Charter. The members of the International Charter include space and geological agencies from around the world. During natural disasters, the members allow aid agencies to use the seemingly endless amounts of data available from their satellites positioned over parts of the Earth.

Bjorgo and his team then combined the satellite images with population information to create maps that determined how many people were potentially affected by the storm.

"That provides an overview that is needed in the very first day," he said. "Then the maps are sent out to the disaster relief community."