Smarter Partnerships in a Complex World: the Potential of MDG 8

SMARTER PARTNERSHIPS IN A COMPLEX WORLD: THE POTENTIAL OF MDG 8 Side Event: UN High Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on the MDGs Organised by UNITAR, Egypt and the OECD

New York, September 20, 2010

UNOSAT STATEMENT on UNITAR, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the World Bank: a strategic partnership on technology to help countries reduce their vulnerability and plan recovery while facilitate the achievement of Millennium Development Goals

This presentation relates more to post-crisis rehabilitation and recovery than humanitarian response since, from the perspective of the MDGs, humanitarian response should be viewed as an opportunity to launch processes to better achieve the Goals using the momentum provided by reconstruction and disaster risk reduction after large natural disasters.

This is a brief account of how technology, inspiration and collaboration were used to quickly assess the damage caused by the Haiti earthquake in January 2010.

In less than a minute, this event leveled approximately 20 percent of the buildings in greater Port-au-Prince; killed close to a quarter of a million people; injured as many; and left over a million individuals homeless. This event ranks as one of the deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.

This event will also be known as one of the first events where remote sensing technology and analysis of high-resolution imagery was embraced at such a large scale in a real operational sense.

From the very outset of the disaster, high-resolution satellite imagery was available through commercial companies. The analysis of this data by the UNITAR Operational Satellite Applications Programme – UNOSAT provided the first glimpse of the devastation caused by this earthquake and helped national actors and international agencies to better organize and coordinate rescue efforts.

1 The rapid mapping effort which is offered by UNOSAT to the entire humanitarian community since 2003 with support from various donors and the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, soon developed in a large scale effort to determine the extent and impact of the disaster. To this end an innovative and unprecedented partnership was created between UNITAR/UNOSAT, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the World Bank supported by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).

The initiative followed in the footsteps of the overarching political agreement linking the United Nations, the World Bank and the European Commission in the area of Post Disaster Needs Assessment. The aim of the partnership is to mobilise hedge technology in geospatial analysis and mapping to complement efficiently, rapidly and economically the capacity of countries stricken by major disasters and other crises.

In the case of Haiti the partnership, inspired by the MDG8, did not limit itself to its three founders: it extended to the private sector and to the national authorities in charge of geospatial information. The relentless work of Haiti’s National Centre for Geographic and Spatial Information (CNIGS) was at the centre of this unprecedented operation. Private companies such as Google and ImageCat joined in the efforts as did many other UN and national capacities.

The result was an integrated large scale damage assessment for the entire area affected in which each building damaged was accounted for and included in databases then put at the disposal of national authorities and field teams. Many other actors from the UN family, remote sensing laboratories from member states and other private entities participated in this work. The role of field teams and in particular the Haitian people was of strategic importance in creating the first assessment in which technology provided the main basis of knowledge for determining the impact of a catastrophe of this size.

What has worked in terms of achieving MDG8? MDG8 makes clear reference to partnership and technology. The partnership established by UNOSAT, the JRC and the World Bank was capable of attracting and galvanizing local capacity at times of intense stress due to the disaster, involve private companies and release large quantities of satellite data to then complement these capacities with technology intensive support aimed at precise objectives that can be monitored and quantified. In this specific case the World Bank through its Global Facility also flew aerial photography flights over Haiti, which provided invaluable very high resolution imagery.

Today as Haiti rebuilds itself, its government, citizens and its technical agencies can rely on larger than ever geospatial data, a more complete knowledge base of its territory, and enhanced capacity to harness technology to face the fundamental problems of territorial development. This is in a nutshell the power of a strategic partnership founded on technology but resolutely aimed at changing the policy of achieving the MDG: we had the technology AND we used it. Together, and in context.

I wish to thank publicly the World Bank, the Global Facility for DRR and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission as well as the National Geographic and Spatial Information Centre in Haiti and all those who helped us for the dedication and support that made this case a success story.

Thank you