Madagascar Service Production for UN-IFAD and ESA

International financial institutions (IFI) provide financial support and professional advise for development activities on local to regional scale in developing countries. Their activities are generally organised in dedicated projects financed by long-term loans or grants covering social and economical development aspects in a wide range of fields. For certain fields earth observation products and services have been identified as a useful tool to support the monitoring and management of IFI projects, to improve the efficiency of the investments made and finally to assess the impact and social benefits of the financed development activity.

ESA, as part of its Value Adding Element (VAE) programme, has been interacting with the IFI and their stakeholders to understand their working environment and information requirements in particular for earth observation services. This process has resulted in service specifications for one specific user UN-IFAD (UN International Fund for Agricultural Development), which have been put out for tender. The main purpose of the procurement is to demonstrate and validate the utility of currently available EO information services in support of selected IFI projects.

GAF has been awarded with Service Trial 2, which is directly driven by the requirements of the supported IFAD project and its local stakeholders (the AD2M project, www.ad2m.mg). For an area of about 14,000 km² in Western Madagascar (Menabe region), GAF will provide dedicated earth observation products which have been customised to meet the specific user requirements of UN-IFAD best possible. Including products such as Land Cover Maps or Digital Elevation Models, the specified EO-service will deliver products which will be validated together with the service performance by UN-IFAD and local stakeholders. The benefit of the information service will be assessed relatively to the objectives of the project as well.

Project activities started in June 2010 and will be concluded in November 2010.