The EO4SD DRR was present in the last edition of the Understading Risk West and Central Africa, in Abidjan, Ivory Coast 20-22 November 2019. Alberto Lorenzo was invited by the World Bank to introduce the EO4SD DRR project and its activity and how Earth Observation can help improve resilience of West African Cities to disasters. After discussing how Earth Observation, in particular the Copernicus program and how the Sentinel constellation can be useful for reducing the risk of disasters, the EO4SD program and the EO4SD DRR were presented. Attendees of more than 12 cities of West and Central Africa learned the project’s approach of using satellites to tackle the flood and subsidence issues of Banjul (The Gambia) through analysis of terrain deformation, coastal flood and exposure of population and assets.
Alberto participated in a joint session called Spatial data and Resilience Planning Workshop, together with Isabel Margarita Cantada and Grace Doherty (World Bank). In this session, the World Bank team presented the City Scan methodology. In two hands-on exercises, the audience, formed by representatives of African Cities, spoke-up about the risk profile of their cities and enjoyed a transparencies exercise overlaying exposure and risk maps receiving instruction from experts.
The active participation of local users and stakeholders provided insights to understand the need of geospatial information and the existing technological capacity to better adjust the demonstration exercise that the EO4SD DRR consortium (this time Indra, Planetek and ARGANS) is performing in the region during 2020.