Use of GEONETCast real-time satellite data streams for Water & Food Security Early Warning

WFP-ITC project workshop 20 June - 1 July 2011, Enschede

An advanced training workshop will be held at ITC, bringing together senior project scientists from the World Food Program (WFP), the Ethiopian government and ITC. Together they will further develop best practices on the use of real-time satellite and surface data provided by GEOSS, and open source geospatial technologies for use in water and food security early warning in Ethiopia.

The tailor-made workshop is part of the training component of the cooperation project between ITC, WFP-CO Ethiopia and the Disaster Risk Management Food Security Sector agency of the Ministry of Agriculture and National Meteorological Agency (NMA) of Ethiopia.  The project aims at setting up GEONETCast receiving system capacity at the organizations, and will further develop national capacities to use satellite and in-situ data to improve on early warning for water and food security. The real time early warning system technology, currently being set-up by the project is working in synergy with other WFP forecasting schemes in Ethiopia, like e.g. its Livelihood Early Assessment and Protection system, and also supports its vulnerability analysis and mapping unit.

Use is made of open source geospatial software technology i.e., ILWIS Open and GEONETCast Toolbox, developed by ITC and 52North.org. The use of standard PC-computer hardware and satellite antenna receiving systems permits easy local setup and operation, including very fast rate data transfer (> 10 MBits/sec) using global communication satellites. See also http://www.itc.nl/Pub/WRS/WRS-GEONETCast.

For more information on the project, pls. contact Chris Mannaerts.

GEOSS: The Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

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