Mr. Leong Keong Kwoh, Director, Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (CRISP)
Mr. Naoto Matsuura, Senior Chief Officer of Satellite Applications, JAXA

Messages from Co-Chairs

<Day 1> November 6, 2018

<Day 2> November 7, 2018

1. Scope and Objectives of SAWG Activities

The Space Applications Working Group (SAWG) was established following the 20th anniversary of the APRSAF, and its first meeting was held at APRSAF-21 in Tokyo in December 2014. Part of the motivation for forming the SAWG was to foster enhanced cooperation with local operational agencies in each country in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as with development aid agencies and international organizations, through the promotion of the sustainable operation of space applications, especially for disaster management, integrated water and land resource management, agriculture and other Asian regional topics. Representatives and experts from existing initiatives, including Sentinel Asia and Space Applications for Environment (SAFE), outline their plans to better serve end users. At APRSAF-25 in Singapore, we would like to share information on the progress of the SAWG and its key initiatives, and to discuss further steps for sharing solutions and knowledge development through synergies between key space technologies and international and regional organizations.

1) Sentinel Asia
Sentinel Asia is an international collaboration among space agencies, disaster management agencies, and international agencies looking to apply remote sensing and Web-GIS technologies to support disaster management in the Asia-Pacific region. Sentinel Asia has been successfully operating through the voluntary contributions of Asia-Pacific members since its launch in 2006. In 2006 and 2012, a data dissemination system to support disaster management agencies—the backbone of Sentinel Asia—was established as Step 1 and Step 2. In 2013, APRSAF-19 approved Sentinel Asia to proceed to Step 3 to cover disaster cycles as a whole with the contributions of multiple space applications, while the number of its members has increased to nearly 100 organizations from 25 Asia-Pacific countries. At APRSAF-21 in Tokyo, to further contribute to disaster management for disaster-prone Asia-Pacific countries, three strategic pillars for the evolution of Sentinel Asia were endorsed: strategic management, end-user oriented activities, and cooperative promotion. A Steering Committee for the Strategic Management of Sentinel Asia was formed in 2015 and has developed the Step 3 implementation plan, a further step forward to support a comprehensive disaster management cycle in a sustainable manner under international cooperation. This step 3 implementation plan will be reported at the Plenary and SAWG meeting.

2) SAFE (Space Applications for Environment)
SAFE is a voluntary initiative to encourage long-term environmental monitoring to better understand environmental changes. The SAFE workshop will be held on Day 0 of the SAWG (5 November, 2018) at Nanyang Technological University in cooperation with its School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE). During this workshop, current SAFE prototype leads will report on the status and results of their prototype activities, as well as those of the follow-up activities for completed prototypes. A newly proposed revision of the SAFE TOR to promote APRSAF active participation under regional, multi-country and international cooperation will be presented and reviewed by the review board. Workshop reports and discussions on SAFE Evolution will be made at the SAWG meeting.

3) Thematic sessions
The application fields of disaster, agriculture, and land and water resources, constitute the prioritized social-benefit areas of the SAWG and SAFE framework in collaboration with international/regional organizations such as UN ESCAP and international donor agencies such as ADB. In addition, commercial sector participation on advanced IT technologies, such as big data analysis and cloud computing that are playing a key role for delivering information services using space-based data, will be planned. We will focus on discussing these areas in thematic sessions in which representatives of participating countries are invited to contribute by presenting their utilization of satellite data with other data and advanced IT technologies. However, there is no intention to limit the discussions to these areas, and presentations proposing new activities for the SAWG, especially those highly important to participating countries, are also welcome. The SAWG also appreciates the sharing of experiences, the results of regional cooperation in satellite data utilization, capacity building, and so forth. In addition, we would like to invite representatives of Singapore, as the host country, to organize a special session for their priority areas, including advanced IT technologies and partnerships with commercial companies and other partners.

2. Results of SAWG Activities at APRSAF-24

General statement of SAWG adopted at APRSAF-24 is shown as follow;

• Recognising the Synergy of Earth Observation, Communication, Navigation and emerging technologies for Space Applications in support of enhanced Governance & Development
• Space technology as Enabler (regional platform) for societal development through provision of information / input to find solutions addressing the Global Agenda (Sendai Framework, the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals).
• Enabling Spatial Data Infrastructure through value addition, dissemination and data sharing framework such as Open Data Cube efforts by Australia, India and Vietnam and portals such as JASMIN (JAXA), MOSDAC and BHUVAN (India), MANTAP (Indonesia), etc.

Dr. Shin-ichi Sobue
E-mail: sobue.shinichijaxa.jp  TEL: +81-50-3362-5782