Abstract
Securing Access to Water during Humanitarian Emergencies Track: Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Affairs Author(s): René Saameli During humanitarian emergencies caused by war or natural disasters, access to water is often a key factor to the survival and recovery of the affected communities. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has been assisting war-affected populations all over the world for more than a century. Securing access to proper water, shelter and sanitation facilities is an important aspect of this assistance. In the ICRC, GIS was, up to recently, mainly limited to mapping for reporting purposes. However, recent applications, essentially in the Horn of Africa, show that GIS and RS can make a real difference when serving communities in war and drought torn environments. Some of these applications include GIS and RS aided population vs. water availability analysis for prioritisation of interventions, micro-dam and borehole site identifications, hydraulic network design in 'map free' towns, etc. René Saameli International Committee of the Red Cross OP_ASSIST_EH Av. de la Paix 19 Geneva , null 1202 CH Phone: 0041227302495 E-mail: gpierrehumbert.gva@icrc.org |
|||||
