Quake aid hampered by ban on web shots
Open-access satellite images are revolutionizing responses to disasters. Yet
the government of Pakistan has forced aid agencies to remove pictures of
earthquake devastation from the Internet.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051017/full/4371072a.html
Declan Butler
Three days after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck Kashmir on 8 October,
the Pakistan government appealed for high-resolution satellite images to
help relief efforts. But, apparently to protect national security, Nature
has learned that the government has since forced international agencies and
relief organizations to remove these images from their websites.
The International Charter on Space and Major Disasters put high-resolution
images of the earthquake zone on its website last Friday, then pulled them
off hours later. The charter, a consortium of space agencies, was created in
2000 to supply satellite images and data to communities in need of relief
following a disaster.
An International Charter spokesperson said: "To best aid relief efforts, we
are no longer publicly disseminating pictures of the Pakistan earthquake.
Publication of such images would compromise the ability of United Nations
(UN) forces on the ground to deliver relief. We hope you understand the
situation."
But a senior official at the charter, who asked not to be named, says that
the Pakistan government had demanded that no photos be made accessible to
the public, because it feared the images could compromise security in the
Kashmir region - an area that has long been disputed territory between India
and Pakistan. The UN and other aid agencies need Pakistan's cooperation on
the ground, and had no choice but to comply, he says.
The UN, European Union (EU) and other international agencies have a general
policy of making all such images publicly available. But last week photos of
the quake zone disappeared from sites such as the UN's ReliefWeb and
satellite imaging site UNOSAT, and Reuters' AlertNet. On others they became
password-protected, such as on the EU's disasters site. Images of the
earthquake zone will now be distributed on a "need to know" basis to
affiliated relief organizations, says a senior EU official.
Although the main organizations can still access the data, the pulling of
the images is "regrettable", says the official, who asked not to be named.
The images are useful to other local aid organizations, and to professionals
worldwide who help out using the Internet, the official points out.
The Citizens Foundation, for example, a well-respected Pakistan organization
based in Karachi, is providing basic care packages including tents, blankets
and food rations to those affected. But Ayaz Abdulla, a mechanical engineer
from Karachi who coordinates Internet-based parts of the local relief
effort, and others at the organization, spent much of last week desperately
e-mailing space agencies and commercial suppliers, to try to obtain images.
"We look for major areas of dense devastation that correspond to higher
population, and for access roads to allow relief-goods transport," Abdulla
says. The images are used to plan logistics, work out what roads are open,
and locate isolated settlements.
The importance of publicly available satellite images and other geographical
data was highlighted after the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 and
this year's hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the tsunami, thousands of
geographers and researchers provided high-quality information on the
Internet, "while government agencies were still struggling to call people
back from their holidays", says Thierry Rousselin. A
geographical-information-systems consultant based in Paris, Rousselin
monitored how satellite images were used after the Indian Ocean tsunami.
The response to Katrina was even greater, partly because of the good quality
and availability of public geographic data for the United States, and
because the government was perceived to have made a poor job of relief
efforts. Concerned web users quickly downloaded images of New Orleans, and
published them using browsers such as Google Earth and Google Maps, both of
which allow users to zoom in on any part of the globe to view satellite
images and associated local information. Anyone with a web browser could
then add information about the needs in a particular location to these
webmaps, and thousands did.
Four days after the hurricane hit, a collaboration called the Global
Connection realized how useful such information would be to relief workers.
The Global Connection consisted of Google and scientists at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and NASA Ames Research Center in
Moffett Field, California. Within hours they had added thousands of near
real-time aerial and satellite images of New Orleans into Google Earth and
Google Maps. Internet users then converted these images into a myriad of web
services allowing anyone to report, for example, damage, deaths or needs at
particular locations.
Out of range
High-resolution satellite images, combined with tools such as Google Earth
and Maps, are "bringing a revolution", Rousselin says. "They have advanced
remote sensing more in 6 months than professionals have done over the past
30 years."
Even with the limited data available for Pakistan, Internet users have acted
faster in mapping the area than government and international agencies,
Rousselin argues. On the morning after the Pakistan earthquake had hit,
Internet users worldwide were already busy plotting the disaster in Google
Earth ahead of official agencies, he says.
But Anne Wright, a computer scientist at Ames Research Center who was
involved in mapping the damage after Katrina, says the lack of images of
Pakistan is hampering the Global Connection's efforts. "We haven't played a
similar role with the Pakistan earthquake because we've had no data sources
to work with. After Hurricane Katrina, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration made their post-hurricane imagery publicly available. For
Pakistan, the only available imagery we're aware of is commercial satellite
photography."
She and others have been trying to help the relief groups that are seeking
images. Google has now purchased some imagery from Digital-Globe, a database
of high-resolution earth-imaging satellite pictures, and has provided this
as photographic overlays that anyone can import into Google Earth.
But the lack of data is still being sorely felt on the ground. One of
Abdulla's colleagues at the Citizens Foundation, who did not wish to named,
pleaded in an e-mail to NASA and others: "Could you please tell me whether
it's possible to get updated satellite imagery for this region (northern
Pakistan), just like it was after Hurricane Katrina? Our country needs all
the help it can get, and much more."
* UPDATE - As Nature went to press, the UN informed relief agencies that it
would lift its ban on the public dissemination of images. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
will follow this story in the coming days.
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