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Spotlight on the SERVIR portal
The SERVIR Regional Visualization & Monitoring System for the Mesoamerican region provides an excellent illustration of how GEOSS can support decision makers. To visit the SERVIR Data Portal and explore its functionality, start with this brief guide and demonstration video:
Developed through a partnership between CATHALAC, NASA, USAID, the CCAD and the World Bank, SERVIR provides policymakers, park managers, disaster response agencies, remote sensing scientists and others with satellite-based and in-situ information in a variety of formats.
The SERVIR Data Portal is the largest open-access repository of environmental data, satellite imagery, documents, metadata and online mapping applications for Mesoamerica.
While largely an information discovery tool, the SERVIR Data Portal possesses robust analytical functions. By logging on to www.servir.net, users can connect to the SERVIR Data Portal and execute a variety of specialized operations, from publishing maps to searching for satellite imagery to connecting to decentralized web mapping applications to actually querying and analyzing data.
A good way to get started is to view the demonstration video. This video shows how the capabilities of the SERVIR Data Portal can be combined with other SERVIR data services to monitor and assess the impacts of extreme events such as hurricanes.
The key to the SERVIR Data Portal is that, like the other existing earth observation information portals that will link into the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, it operates on open standards to facilitate interconnectivity with sister systems.
SERVIR-Africa
Last November, SERVIR established a regional node for Africa at the Nairobi, Kenya headquarters of the Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD). SERVIR-Africa is developing tools to predict floods in high-risk areas and vector-borne diseases such as Rift Valley Fever.
For the flood mapping application, SERVIR partners are using data from multiple earth observation missions and sensors (SRTM, AMSR-E, TRMM and MODIS) and adapting the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Global Hazard Model to develop a prototype flood-potential product.
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South-South Collaboration: Staff from the SERVIR nodes at RCMRD and CATHALAC working together. |
SERVIR’s approach is anchored in South–South collaboration, bridging the Americas and Africa. CATHALAC and RCMRD staff have worked together to identify equipment, prepare rooms for the equipment at RCMRD, configure and install equipment, and implement a security and back-up plan. The hardware configuration is based on CATHALAC’s experience thus far in Central America.
The set up is fully scalable so that the system can be expanded as SERVIR-Africa progresses. The two centers are also working to standardize their database management procedures, and they will explore common methods for predicting severe weather events, analyzing threats from climate change, and understanding health and ecosystem interactions.
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