Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Nigeria to Use Spacetech to Fight Flood Disaster

Nigeria - The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology is to avail relevant agencies with space-based technology to address environmental problems.The Minister of Science and Technology, Chief Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhre stated this in her speech at a Workshop on Flood Early Warning systems organised in Abuja on Tuesday.

Mrs. Ekpiwhre said agencies of her ministry like the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) and the Centre For Remote Sensing, would be willing to work with the Federal Ministry of Environment and Urban Development, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), and other agencies to develop early warning and monitoring systems for sustainable environmental development in Nigeria.

According to her, space-based technology such as Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System and Global Positioning System are very reliable as they provide faster, cheaper, accurate and reliable data for addressing flood and other environmental disasters. Mrs Ekpiwhere said NASRDA and the National Centre for Remote Sensing had just produced settlement Map of Nigeria, and a Digital Elevation Model and they are currently working to produce a National land use/land cover mapping at the scale of I: 100000 using NigeriaSat – I.

While canvassing closer collaboration with her – Ministry with that of Environment, Mrs Ekpiwhre added that satellite images provides synoptic data of an area either in real-time or near real-time at different spatial and/or temporal resolutions.

She further said that the Geographic Information System provides the enabling environment for combining remote sensing date, Digital Elevation Models, hydrological data and other spatial and attribute datasets to delineates flood affected areas under different magnitudes of floods or flood scenarios.

She concluded that the development of flood Early Warning systems for Nigeria was not only timely but necessary in achieving the 7 – Point Agenda, adding that the Ministry's Space Agency would provide all satellite images while the centre for Remote Sensing based in Jos was well-positioned to facilitate the implementation of Flood Early Warning System. 

Source : http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=118965

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