Disaster risk reduction and reconstruction in Indonesia with Earth Observation

Abstract

On September 28,2018, a 7.5 magnitude earthquakestruckthe island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. The epicentre was the provincial capital of Palu, located on a bay on the island's northwest coast. The quake triggered a tsunami that swept 10-meter tallwavesof seawater and swamped the city. The combination of the earthquake, tsunami, soil liquefaction and landslides claimed well over 2000 lives, destroyed homes, buildings, infrastructuresand farmland in several districts.Recognizing the need to relocate settlements from the liquefaction-prone areas, the Indonesiangovernment developed the Master Plan for Recovery and Reconstruction for Central Sulawesi through the EARR and SWIP projects. Indra and Planetek Italia contributed to the implementation of this plan with a batch of EO-based services. The main information provided was related toterrain deformation mapping (before the earthquake)followed by the update of terrain information mapping (in the months immediately after the earthquake)and reconstruction monitoring with Very High Resolution images. The collaboration went onwith a capacity-building workshop and aknowledge transfer activity held in Jakarta in June 2019 regarding the technical aspects of the delivered products andtraining sessionsfor local users to teach them to use the Geohazards Exploitation Platform (GEP) of ESA.

Keywords

• earthquake
• risk
• EO based services
• monitoring
• rheticus
• cloud-computing