Early warning systems on agricultural droughts being developed in SL
View(s):A Specialised Training Workshop to enhance the national capacity of Sri Lanka on the use of space technology derived data and tools for agricultural drought monitoring and Early Warning was held last month at the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Techologies (ACCIMT) in Moratuwa.
An effective action plan for implementation of a pilot project on space technology based monitoring and early warning of agricultural drought in Sri Lanka was developed at the workshop, jointly organised by the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and ACCIMT.
This training workshop was conducted as part of the UNESCAP’s initiative for developing the national capacity of the countries in the Asia and the Pacific regions to use space technologies for effective drought monitoring and early warning, namely Regional Cooperative Mechanism for Drought Monitoring and Early Warning (known in short as the UNESCAP Drought Mechanism), through the long-standing Regional Space Applications Cooperation Programme for Sustainable Development (RESAP). The aim of the programme is to build resilience of the countries in the region against mainly the agricultural drought, the creeping, slowly manifesting single disaster that is responsible for the major proportion of the overall economic losses due to all disasters across the region, the organizers said.
Approximately 40 senior officials, mainly scientists and engineers, representing the government agencies of relevance to this initiative, including department of agriculture, department of irrigation, department of agrarian development, department of meteorology, disaster management centre, department of census and statistics, national water supply and drainage board, water resources board and the ACCIMT, participated in this specialised training workshop.
Under the proposed pilot project, which covers 10 districts, and will be executed over the next three crop-seasons namely Yala 2014, Maha 2014, and Yala 2015, indices for modelling and prediction of drought and its impact on the agricultural output will be developed.
Through ESCAP coordination and the Regional Service Nodes in China and India, around 200 near real time and archived medium-resolution satellite imagery covering the relevant areas, obtained at regular intervals of time, will be used for the pilot project in Sri Lanka. In addition to satellite imagery, relevant ground-truth data collected from the field, and a host of other information such as agro-ecological maps, soil maps, and meteorological data will be used in the analysis, which will be carried out using a series of application software products to be developed for the purpose. Specialised further training for the officers involved will be arranged both in country and at specialised centres abroad. Further technical expert missions will be arranged as necessary by the UN ESCAP.
“The action plan developed at the above workshop for the pilot project will be implemented by a project- team representing relevant participating agencies, and will be guided by a steering committee comprising the heads of agencies. The overall management of the project will be carried out by the ACCIMT in its capacity as the national focal point for space technology applications in Sri Lanka,” the organisers said.