Asia-Pacific E-Resilience Toolkit Tool
Space Applications for Environment (SAFE)
Space Applications for Environment (SAFE) is a voluntary initiative to encourage environmental monitoring in the long term to understand environmental changes. SAFE may be useful for risk reduction and adaptation programs associated with disasters and environmental risks.
The Asia-Pacific region contains approximately two thirds of the world’s population, and it faces a huge threat from disasters, including droughts and floods. Therefore, it is important to monitor climatic parameters as well as possible effects related to climate and environmental changes.
Satellite remote sensing technology enables observation of the Earth from space and provides a basis for the measurement of some of the changing environmental parameters in various areas such as water resources, sea level, land cover, deforestation, agricultural production, and ecosystems. Continuous provision of such data could provide environmentally sensitive information with varying spectral and spatial resolutions for a better understanding of the status of the environment, its changes, and implications for its sustainable management.
In the Asia-Pacific region, SAFE has carried out weather-related projects in, among others, Sri Lanka (development and implementation of an operational prototype for advanced flood forecasting, early warning, and data sharing), Viet Nam (utilization of statellite data in flood forecasting), Indonesia (drought monitoring), Cambodia (water cycle and agricultural activities) and Lao PDR (forest monitoring).
