Nigeria to use space tech to fight flood disaster

Source(s): Daily Trust, Media Trust

The Federal Ministry of Science and Technology is to avail relevant agencies with space-based technology to arrest disaster occurrence and other environmental problems.

The Minister of Science and Technology, Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhre, promised this at a Workshop on Flood Early Warning Systems organized in Abuja yesterday.

Mrs. Ekpiwhre said Agencies of her Ministry like the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) and the Centre For Remote Sensing, will 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 to address flood and other environmental disasters .

Mrs Ekpiwhere said NASRDA and the National Centre for Remote Sensing have 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 data, Digital Elevation Models, hydrological data and other spatial and attribute datasets to delineate 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 to achieve 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

Written by Hamisu Muhammad

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