After the 2004 tsunami struck India, then-14-year-old Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan visited several affected villages with her father.
As climate change escalates storms and other dangers, work like Swaminathan’s will be key to saving lives: Only when we know where disasters happen can emergency workers plan their response and recovery efforts quickly and efficiently.Q: What made you choose to work in geomatics — and what exactly is it?
For massive disasters like the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the first 72 hours are the most crucial to save the maximum number of lives. But when it strikes a village in the mountains and there’s no telecommunications working, satellite imagery quickly shows which places are affected. After an earthquake, landslides are very common. So, we need to know if a truck carrying supplies can reach the village or not.
Somalia is a good example of this. We bring all the information into one platform and spatially display it across the country. That helps us see which regions might be most prone to specific hazards like floods, droughts, and even cyclones, though [they are] rare. We need to know where it can happen.
For example, UNICEF partners with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency on a joint preparedness and response, since they would already be doing these things at a basic level and we want to avoid duplication of efforts. But the main problem is twofold: One is communicating this information to the people living in that hazard zone. It has to go through multiple loops, providing their national or local disaster-management authorities with this information. The second is understanding vulnerability factors at a regional level, such as poverty and child marriage. So the whole arena of things needs to improve.
RS: I volunteer with the U.N. Development Program using satellite-based monitoring to support their development projects across the world. For example, if UNDP built a school or a hospital, I would remotely monitor the progress and also check if the building is still standing in case a conflict broke out.
In recent years in India, I’ve seen videos in local languages played in schools on how to prepare for a cyclone. Several emerging countries have done extensive work in improving their early-warning systems, their preparedness measures and also understanding how quickly we can respond. I think in the new way of living post-pandemic, as long as this is in memory, we will be using this experience in mainstreaming emergency preparedness and understanding risk.