On November 14 – 16, 2022, the 12th annual coordination meeting of UN-SPIDER regional support offices was held in Vienna, where Ukraine was represented by employees of the Department of Mathematical Modeling and Data Analysis – Prof. Nataliia Kussul and assistant Hanna Yailymova.
The United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster management and Emergency Response –UN-SPIDER is aimed at close cooperation of regional and national expert centers on the use of space technologies in the fight against natural disasters and formed a network of Regional Support Offices (RSO) for the coordinated implementation of program activities in the respective regions.
Ukraine has joined the UN-SPIDER program since 2011 and actively continues to work in the direction of using space information to identify and combat natural disasters. In particular, the meeting presented the results that were obtained on the basis of the created classification maps for historical years in comparison with this year’s classification map. The main conclusion is a 10% decrease in cultivated areas in Ukraine compared to previous years. The results of monitoring fires in natural ecosystems and nature reserves of Ukraine are also presented.
The algorithm for searching for explosions from shells and bombs in agricultural fields, which was developed by the team together with the Space Research Institute NASU-SSAU, is presented. Within this algorithm, polygons of agricultural fields are used, which were created within the framework of the EO4UA initiative (an initiative to support scientists of Ukraine, which was launched by the Polish company CloudFerro and the Joint Research Center).
UN-SPIDER currently has 27 Regional Support Offices (RSOs) located in different regions and two new RSOs waiting to join the network. These RSOs are involved in supporting UN-SPIDER activities, such as technical advisory support, rapid mapping during emergency response, preparation of specific publications and content for the knowledge portal, and contribution to or co-organization of UN-SPIDER workshops and conferences.
