Open-access satellite images are revolutionizing responses to disasters. Yet the government of Pakistan has forced aid agencies to remove pictures of earthquake devastation from the Internet....Three days after the 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck Kashmir on 8 October, the Pakistan government appealed for high-resolution satellite images to help relief efforts. But, apparently to protect national security, the government has since forced international agencies and relief organizations to remove these images from their websites. The International Charter on Space and Major Disasters put high-resolution images of the earthquake zone on its website last Friday, then pulled them off hours later. The charter, a consortium of space agencies, was created in 2000 to supply satellite images and data to communities in need of relief following a disaster....But a senior official at the charter, who asked not to be named, says that the Pakistan government had demanded that no photos be made accessible to the public, because it feared the images could compromise security in the Kashmir region - an area that has long been disputed territory between India and Pakistan. The UN and other aid agencies need Pakistan's cooperation on the ground, and had no choice but to comply, he says....The importance of publicly available satellite images and other geographical data was highlighted after the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 and this year's hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of the tsunami, thousands of geographers and researchers provided high-quality information on the Internet, "while government agencies were still struggling to call people back from their holidays", says Thierry Rousselin....[T]he lack of data is still being sorely felt on the ground [in Pakistan]....[An earthquake rescue worker with Pakistan's] Citizens Foundation, who did not wish to named, pleaded in an e-mail to NASA and others: "Could you please tell me whether it's possible to get updated satellite imagery for this region (northern Pakistan), just like it was after Hurricane Katrina? Our country needs all the help it can get, and much more."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/19/2005 09:34:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
