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(UNESCAP) and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies (ACCIMT), was held recently at the ACCIMT, Moratuwa.
This training workshop was conducted as part of the UNESCAP’s initiative for developing the national capacity of the countries in the Asia and the Pacific regions to use space technologies for effective drought monitoring and early warning, namely the Regional Cooperative Mechanism for Drought Monitoring and Early Warning (known in short as the UNESCAP Drought Mechanism), through the long-standing Regional Space Applications Cooperation Program for Sustainable Development (RESAP). The aim of the program is to build resilience of the countries in the region against mainly the agricultural drought, the creeping, slowly manifesting single disaster that is responsible for the major proportion of the overall economic losses due to all disasters across the region.
Approximately 40 senior officials, mainly scientists and engineers, representing government agencies of relevance to this initiative, including the Department of Agriculture, Department of Irrigation, Department of Agrarian Development, Department of Meteorology, Disaster Management Centre, Department of Census and Statistics, National Water Supply and Drainage Board, Water Resources Board and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, participated in this specialised training workshop, which, whilst providing the participants valuable exposure to highly specialised state-of-the-art applications of space technology on the subject, also enabled them to actively engage in developing an effective action plan for implementation of a pilot project on space technology based monitoring and early warning of agricultural drought in Sri Lanka.
Under the proposed pilot project, which covers 10 districts, and will be executed over the next three crop-seasons namely Yala 2014, Maha 2014, and Yala 2015, indices for modelling and prediction of drought and its impact on the agricultural output will be developed. Through ESCAP coordination and the Regional Service Nodes in China and India, around 200 near real-time and archived medium-resolution satellite imagery covering the relevant areas, obtained at regular intervals of time, will be used for the pilot project in Sri Lanka. In addition to satellite imagery, relevant ground-truth data collected from the field, and a host of other information such as agro-ecological maps, soil maps, and meteorological data will be used in the analyses, which will be carried out using a series of 
application software products to be developed for the purpose. Specialised further training for the officers involved will be arranged both in country and at specialised centres abroad. Further technical expert missions will be arranged as necessary by UNESCAP.
As the immediate outcome of the project, the capacity of the relevant public agencies to make timely decisions and interventions in matters related to agricultural drought will be enhanced thereby contributing to the overall national economic output. The project is therefore an effort to enhance the knowledge and capacity of integrating space information products and services across various sectors such as agriculture, irrigation, agrarian services and meteorology to manage droughts more efficiently starting from this year onwards. The action plan developed at the above workshop for the pilot project will be implemented by a project team representing relevant participating agencies, and will be guided by a steering committee comprising the heads of agencies. The overall management of the project will be carried out by ACCIMT in its capacity as the national focal point for space technology applications in Sri Lanka.
A total of nine international experts with expertise on the related disciplines, drawn from UN ESCAP, Indian space research organisation (ISRO), India, national remote sensing center (NRSC), China, institute of remote sensing and digital earth (RADI), China, regional multi-hazard early-warning system (RIMES) – a regional inter-governmental organisation, and the international water management institute (IWMI), acted as the resource personnel for the above workshop.
This national program assisted by the UNESCAP is being implemented consequent to selection of Sri Lanka as a pilot country for space technology based capacity building on drought monitoring and early warning in November 2013. This is in addition to Sri Lanka’s selection by UN ESCAP as the first pilot country for implementation of the five-year Asia Pacific Regional Action Plan on Space Technology Applications for Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Reduction, 2012-2017.
The proposal by the Government of Sri Lanka for ‘pilot-country’ status in the above two space technology application initiatives, namely ‘the five year action plan’ and ‘the drought monitoring mechanism’ was made to the UNESCAP by the Minister of Technology and Research Patali Champika Ranawaka.
Sri Lanka, represented by the ACCIMT as the National Focal Point for Space Technology Applications, has been an active member of UNESCAP’s Regional Space Applications Program, and was elected respectively to the Vice-Chairmanship, Chairmanship, and Vice-Chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Consultative Committee during the successive sessions 2010/2011, 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, and was then elected to the Chair of the High Level Decision Makers Meeting on the Five-year Asia-Pacific Regional Action Plan in November 2013, with Eng. Sanath Panawennage, Director- General and CEO of the ACCIMT, officiating in the position in each occasion.
