Resident Coordinator's Message on the 20th Anniversary of the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT)

Assistant Secretary General Nikhil Seth, esteemed colleagues, and distinguished guests.

It is my pleasure to join you virtually for celebrating UNOSAT's 20th anniversary and also extend our thanks for the services UNOSAT has provided to UN funds, programs, specialized agencies, and the Member States in support of the achievement of the sustainable development goals.

As you may know, Thailand experienced widespread flooding in the central and northeastern provinces this year, a decade after the devastating 2010 floods. Triggered by two tropical storms and persistent monsoon rains, floods occurred in vast geographic areas. The hazard was also very dynamic given that flood water moved from the highlands to plains over two months. The insights from satellite image analysis provided daily by UNOSAT, helped the government and the UN understand the extent of flooding, potential hotspots across provinces, the number of people impacted, and the nature of immediate support required at the community level. The periodic satellite updates, also helped us monitor the trend of flood evolution and compare the situation against the 2010 flooding, to offer evidence-based flooding scenarios. To tackle the vast geographic scope and long duration of the event, UNOSAT used Artificial Intelligence and developed a decision-making dashboard that we embedded in the UN Thailand website to institutionalize dissemination. The high quality, evidence driven rapid analysis proved invaluable during the emergency, when objective information is hard to come by. We understand that the government is also using the satellite images of UNOSAT, to map agricultural damage to compensate affected farmers across the country. Based on this engagement, FAO and UNDP will be partnering with UNOSAT to support sub-national capacity building to utilise satellite imagery to better respond to emergencies at the local level and track impact on agricultural yields.  

As you are aware, satellite imagery has become one of the most crucial tools for disaster risk management and resilience building. It gives us the ability to collect continuous observations of the earth, which shapes our understanding of hazard dynamics, development patterns, monitoring of risk driving factors like climate change, environmental degradation. Satellite imagery can also provide crucial information to analyse air pollution patterns, provide data for biodiversity assessment and help farmers to engage in more sustainable agricultural practices. In addition to that, frontier technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics can unlock hidden patterns, making satellite data more practicable for member states, private sector, and civil society.

We are confident UNOSAT will continue to deliver the operational services and to develop capacities across the UN and the government to advance SDGs by harnessing the power of these modern tools and technologies.

I would also like to congratulate UNOSAT on its new status as the United Nations Satellite Centre, approved by the ECOSOC resolution earlier this year.  The UN Country Team in Thailand looks to continuing working with you to bring the benefits of satellite imagery and other geospatial technology applications to the people in need. I would also encourage other UN country teams to make the best use of these very useful services from UNOSAT.

Thank you very much for your time.