Over 1000 low cost GIS-based equipment will be handed over to fishermen by ISRO in a step towards helping them to send vital information during natural disasters.

Announcing this, chairman G Madhavan Nair, said that India is looking to play a major role in providing real time data to the Sentinel Asia programme.

Noting the country’s recent establishment of the disaster management support system, he said that India would like to share the experience with others in the region.

The Sentinel Asia (SA) is an initiative that aims to use remote sensing data and GIS technologies to support disaster management in the Asia Pacific region.

“The Indian earth observation system provides data once in 40 hours now. We will soon make it on a daily basis,” said Nair, calling for more earth observation systems to monitor parameters in the context of global warming.

He was speaking at the 14th session of the Asia Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF), where the main theme was ‘space for human empowerment’.

Delegates from over 25 nations and 12 international organisations are participating in the 3-day forum.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency which has taken the initiative to implement SA, announced that it had executed an urgent observation of Bangladesh and graphic information was to be uploaded on the SA system by noon on Thursday.

The SA at present relies on Jaxa’s land observing satellite ALOS but will soon be gathering more information from India, Thailand and South Korea, said Yoshitsugu Harada, vice minister of education, culture and science and technology. “Jaxa will launch next year a wideband internetworking satellite, WINDS. This will augment the network infrastructure in the region,” he said.

The minister announced the reinforcement of “science and technology diplomacy” by adding official development assistance to activities. “By this we are seeking to expand science and technology cooperation within the Asia Pacific region,” he said.