Carsten Haub
EFTAS Remote Sensing Technology
Transfer GmbH, Germany
[email protected]
Sven Gilliams
Flemish Institute for Technological
Research, Belgium
[email protected]
The Global Monitoring for Food Security project of European Space Agency aims to provide earth observation-based services for, and to encourage partnerships in, monitoring food security and related environmental processes
Currently, more than one billion people on Earth are affected by hunger and more than 30 countries are experiencing food emergencies. Most of these are in Africa. While advanced earth observation technologies have the potential to contribute to more effective mechanisms for identifying food crises and defining early reactions, they have been rarely integrated into decision making processes. This is because of the following reasons:
- Limited capacities and experts networks at the stakeholders level
- Lack of integrated processes to operationally generate the required geo information at appropriate scales
- Lack of long term availability and continuity of earth observation and satellite data.
GMFS
A significant initiative to address these issues is the European Space Agency's (ESA) Global Monitoring for Food Security (GMFS) that is part of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) framework. GMFS aims to establish operational services for crop monitoring in support of food security monitoring to serve policy makers and operational users by ensuring sustainable integration and application of those solutions into a well nodded stakeholders network in Africa.
The GMFS framework focuses on those aspects of food security monitoring where satellite derived technology brings added value. These include monitoring parameters reflecting crop condition, agricultural production and overall vegetation health. The GMFS framework aims at establishing multi-scale crop monitoring services by providing spatial information on variables in different spatial, temporal and thematic resolutions affecting food security. Policy makers and operational users at various administrative levels need reliable and continuous information sources. Advanced crop information derived from earth observation data can contribute to their need to achieve transparency about the extent and distribution of agricultural production as an essential information to assess food availability.
The ultimate goal to identify food insecure areas and populations and to quantify their level of vulnerability with particular emphasis on food security needs more than only innovative and robust processing chains. Assessing the information needs, being able to develop a technological solution and providing services is the first step. Ensuring know- how transfer, following up the actual integration of the services into the day-to-day frameworks and being fully involved into the institutional networks is a vital step to really bring the solutions to the user institutions.
RECENT GMFS OUTCOMES
The first two stages of the project ran from 2003 until 2009. These two stages demonstrated the value of remote sensing (RS) information from continental to local scale for crop monitoring and food security. These two stages also saw establishment of good working relations among the stakeholder network in Africa. These services provided the regional centres the necessary reliable access to early warning data sets and capacity building to support their decision makers and the national early warning units. As an addition to the continuously production and provision of the early warning services (EWS), GMFS established an extensive data cataloguing and dissemination infrastructure by means of GeoNetwork, Internet, FTP transmission and the ESA data dissemination System (DDS).
At a national level, GMFS introduced and integrated the agricultural mapping services (AM) into the common work flows. GMFS delivered demonstration cases and identified bottlenecks and weaknesses of RS for agricultural applications. GMFS also provided advanced training for ground truthing field work, GMFS and satellite data handling and the integration of those products into the daily work of various government experts.
GMFS forged good relations at regional level with the AGRHYMET centre in Niamey, RCMRD in Nairobi and the SADCRRSU in Gaborone. The relations established at the national level included close working relations with ministries and public authorities in Senegal, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malawi, Sudan and Zimbabwe. These relations were strengthened by the fact that the GMFS partnership opted to have local experts as national GMFS representatives to support the consortium with its user liaison and implementation of GMFS services. The key services provided in the first two stages included:
- For early warning servicservices, about 30 million km² were covered with indicators on a 10 daily basis, serving 8 regions of interest and 11 user organisations
- Agricultural mapping products were provided to five countries: Senegal, Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi and Zimbabwe, addressing the needs of respective ministries of agriculture. Throughout the six years of GMFS operations, Malawi and Senegal were mapped 5 times and Ethiopia and Sudan were mapped twice.
- Validation of these products based upon fieldwork. In collaboration with local experts, nine fieldwork campaigns were executed. Agro-meteorological departments in Senegal and Malawi were supported with yield estimates. These yield estimates were provided twice per year and covered the most important regions in the country.
In the last six years, 30 training session have been provided to about 200 national, regional and international experts.
These sessions covered all aspects of GMFS, namely:
- Field data collection
- Validation procedures
- Early warning indicators
- High resolution SAR data and medium resolution optical data for agricultural mapping
- GMFS support to CFSAM methodology
- Agro-meteorological yield forecasting
- ESA DDS.
TRANSITION TO GMFS3
For the recently launched third stage of GMFS (GMFS3), the service integration and know how transfer will be employed on:
- Organisational level to transfer the services to operational structures through the actual involvement of the users into the service network,
- Technological level through an ongoing evolution of the services and customisation dedicated to the different user needs and
- With a logistical focus aiming at establishing and strengthening data accessibility and dissemination by means of up to date technologies.
The particular emphasis of GMFS Stage 3 is on the following measures:
Transfer services to operational structures: The GMFS partnership has initiated the organisational process of growing involvement in the African stakeholders' frameworks.
Involvement of user organisations: By design, users are involved in GMFS stage 3. The proposed activities build upon the partnerships established with key users during Stage 2 (Sudan, Malawi, Senegal, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia). This is to ensure continuity in supporting those users and further paving the way for sustainability.
Users are the driving force behind the implementation of proposed GMFS activities. Those will be the institutions to execute and use the GMFS services beyond stage 3. The regional centres will be the key actors of the service sustainability ensuring a multiplier effect.
PLANNED SERVICES
The planned information services are:
- Early warning service
- Know-how transfer for SAR agricultural applications
- Sudan agricultural mapping
- Sudan: Support to agricultural surveys
- Support to crop and food supply assessment missions for Zimbabwe
- Malawi: Support to agricultural surveys
- FAST services (support to CFSAM and delivery of early warning indicators)
SERVICE EVOLUTION
In the third stage, services will be continuously improved through dedicated R&D actions and through parallel R&D projects. The focus will be on service transfer to the users. However, there are two dedicated service lines planned for R&D within GMFS3. The dedicated R&D activities are foreseen for Malawi to ensure evolution of the services:
- Experimental crop acreage assessment
- Experimental crop specific and crop changes maps
These two work packages will tackle important outstanding issue of agricultural monitoring of selected agro ecological systems and will be performed in close collaboration with local expert (agricultural and remotes sensing) and the GMFS science team.
SERVICE SUSTAINABILITY
The design of the project is such that all activities are geared towards the integration of these type of services into operational monitoring mechanisms.
In particular, the planned activities and actions are:
- Secure access to the users to earth observationbased products, through setting up operational multi- sensor processing chains and facilitating the distribution and usage through dedicated tools and dissemination mechanisms.
- Capacity building and training in order to better understand and facilitate usage of the GMFS data and products.
Set-up access and data dissemination mechanisms. A logistical focus of GMFS3 is emphasising the establishment and strengthening of operational, reliable and easy to handle data accessibility and dissemination systems by means of up-to-date technologies. During GMFS Stage 2, ESA DDS network, EUMETCAST (VGT4AFRCIA) and the UN GeoNetwork nodes, in addition to standard means such as FTP, web sites or e-mails were used as data provision structures and access to GMFS products and satellite data archives such as the GMES framework as well as recent and future ESA missions.
OUTLOOK
For a successful continuation of the GMFS service chains beyond the third stage, a basic operational requirement will be the insurance of financial continuity which will depend on the robustness of the processing technology, the reliability of data acquisitions, the accurateness of the products, the timeliness of the output information and the correct application of the outcomes.
The following aspects will indicate the success of GMFS service integration and technology transfer:
- The range of implementation into users' operational structures
- Sufficient capacity and training aimed at understanding the services provided to facilitate the correct application of services;
- Adequate participative customisation of technologies to facilitate data processing
- Easy access and operational availability of satellite data and geoinformation underlying the services.
