This week Syslab organized a day long trip for participants of “Disaster Management” (DM) and “Introduction to Geospatial Analysis” courses to United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) at UN Headquarters in Vienna. UNOOSA is responsible for promoting international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. This UN office is also managing the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER). UN-SPIDER develops solutions to address the limited access developing countries have to specialized technologies in management of disasters.
During this visit, students met with the Luc St-Pierre, Chief of the Space Applications Section of UNOOSA, and Lorant Czaran, Programme Officer, responsible for UN-SPIDER activities. Students from the DIsaster Management course presented their course projects to UN officials and got their feedback and recommendations. The projects were focused on assessment of a country’s (or region’s, or city’s) current disaster management system, in context of recent natural disaster event. Some projects have been selected for further development as a case study to be displayed on the UN-SPIDER's Knowledge Portal.
Students also had a tour around the UN campus in Vienna and attended the meeting of the Legal Subcommittee of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). Morever, they were granted access to the UN Office in Vienna for the entire period of the Legal Subcommittee session (9 to 20 April 2018) as observers. UNOOSA serves as the secretariat for the COPUOS, General Assembly's only committee dealing exclusively with international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space.