Meeting Millennium Goals

On Tuesday 18th September 2007 at 11:35 am Pacific Daylight Time, a Boeing Delta II rocket sent a satellite weighing 2,500 kilograms into 496km sun-synchronous orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. WorldView-1 was the thirteenth earth-observation satellite blasted beyond earth’s atmosphere this year; indeed, such hardware is currently being constructed and launched at breakneck speed. Remarkably, this was the first US earth-observation satellite this year, while China and Japan have each already put two such satellites into space. If all pre-announced launches go to plan 2007 will become an unprecedented year, the number of orbiting earth-observation satellites reaching 25, the largest annual total ever. However, the launch of US GeoEye-1, earlier scheduled to take place in the third quarter of 2007, has already been postponed to late First Quarter or early Second Quarter 2008.

Features
Worldview-1 is part of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) NextView programme. The first images are expected back before 18th October 2007, to become commercially available at the beginning of 2008. When fully operational WorldView-1 will provide panchromatic imagery with a ground-sample distance (GSD) of 50cm at nadir and dynamic range of 11 bits per pixel. A larger GSD could technically have been achieved, but US regulations require that satellite images offered to commercial customers have a GSD no better than 50cm. The swath width at nadir is 17.6km and one day of data acquisition may result in up to 750,000km2being captured. During a single pass, contiguous areas of 60x110km can be covered in mono and 30x110km in stereo. The platform is so stable and the positioning sensors so accurate that an accuracy of 3m to 7.6m can be achieved without using ground-control points, 2m with them. The same area on earth can be captured within just six day of a previous visit, so that if a GSD of 1m suffices, revisit frequency may rise to 1.7 days.

Development Goals
These characteristics make the imagery particularly suited for map creation and updating and thus an important prerequisite for planning, development, disaster-management, poverty reduction and slum prevention. The United Nations (UN) recognises sound planning as a requirement for poverty reduction and acknowledges in particular the important role of geo-information technology in realising Goal 7 of the United Nations Millennium Declaration to ensure environmental sustainability. The accuracy and level of detail of satellite imagery, not only from WorldView-1 but many other satellites, is becoming so rich that it is effectively turning into key datasets for establishing land administration in developing countries. And proper land administration has also been recognised by the UN as an essential means for reaching Millennium Development Goals (MDG). This month’s interviewee Dr Anna Tibaijuka, UN under-secretary-general and executive director of UN-Habitat told us, “It is clear to us that to arrive at sustainable development and social equity it is necessary to establish proper tenure systems.”

Africa
However, the UN also admits the modest progress of MDG in sub-Saharan Africa, the only region in the world where not even a single country is on track. A matter of considerable concern to many influential people, including Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon himself, and representatives of the African Union and European Commission. It led to their meeting in New York and launching the MDG Africa Steering Group on 14th September 2007. The African Union sees the areas of agriculture, education, health, infrastructure and statistics as crucial for the African continent. The World Bank is to focus on the possibilities of increasing productivity in small-scale agriculture, but there is also huge need for investment in water and sanitation and, above all, in reliable and timely data. In addition to noting that promised international support had not been forthcoming, African Union Commissioner for Economic Affairs, Maxwell Mkwezalamba told the meeting that the issue of statistics could not be overstated. “In Africa we have problems of data. Data is not reliable, is not timely. And therefore this is one area that we need to focus on. We do appreciate the fact that this meeting has also looked at developing statistical systems as one important area of focus,” he added.

Geo-database
The countrywide census held in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country in terms of population, in early spring 2006 demonstrates how important is proper data. A census can only be called successful if data and statistics are on the one hand reliable and accurate, and on the other acceptable to national and international stakeholders. The nucleus of any census is the area of enumeration, the unit for collection of all demographic data. To obtain accurate and reliable data it is essential that no individual is left out of the enumeration process and that none is enumerated more than once. To achieve this goal enumeration-area maps need to cover every corner of the country so that neither gaps nor overlap emerge between areas. At the crux of establishing such a rigorous data-collection framework lies the use of detailed geo-information.

Indeed, proper planning, land administration and census all begin with a geo-database, and today’s satellite imagery with its rich content and high revisit frequency might provide a sound foundation for helping Africa reduce the risks of not meeting Millennium Development Goals.