Human Security
Human &
Environmental Security
The Secure World Foundation focuses not only on keeping space sustainable but also on maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of using space for the benefit of humanity.
Why Is It Important?
- Space systems, including position, navigation and timing (PNT), remote sensing and telecommunications, provide significant benefits in support of human and environmental security. For example, following a natural disaster, all three technologies come into play to provide first responders with crucial information to guide rescue efforts and to assist recovery crews with recovery and rebuilding efforts.
- Precision agriculture, used increasingly around the world, depends heavily on PNT and remotely sensed data for guiding planting or applying fertilizer and pesticides to crops. Both technologies are used heavily for identifying encroachment on protected forests, and in managing other natural resources. PNT services are also extensively used by firefighters and emergency medical technician (EMT) crews in emergency response.
- Space systems can play a role in improving all seven aspects of
human security as defined by the 1994 United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
report and contributing to the Millennium Development Goals.
- Economic security
- Food security
- Health security
- Environmental security
- Community security
- Personal security
- Political security
Challenges to Obtaining Maximum Benefit from Space Systems
- For a variety of reasons, benefits from these systems do not always adequately reach the ordinary citizens who could benefit most from them.
- The full utility of these important systems is blunted by a variety of institutional, policy, educational, and social barriers.
What is SWF Doing to Enhance the Benefits of Space?
Narrowing the gap between potential and reality requires a combination of technical and policy expertise, which SWF can provide.
Increasing Awareness of Potential Benefits from Space Assets
- Partnership with Imaging Notes magazine informs a wide scientific, commercial, and policy making community about how remote sensing technologies and spatial information can assist in solving the urgent interrelated issues of the environment, energy, and security. The magazine serves as a vehicle for SWF to highlight our work and bring the message of better governance and effective use of space activities to a broader audience.
Facilitating Dialogue and International Cooperation
- Natural and Manmade Disasters call for an efficient, coordinated response to improving the delivery of space benefits to victims. SWF works with organizations such as UN SPIDER to hold capacity-building workshops and training to assist developing countries with the challenges of responding more effectively to natural disasters.
Promoting Ways to Increase Effective Use of Space Assets
- Community Remote Sensing (CRS) is "a new field that combines remote sensing with citizen science, social networks, and crowd-sourcing to enhance the data obtained from traditional sources. It includes the collection, calibration, analysis, communication, or application of remotely sensed information by these community means.
The development of modern communication tools such as smart phones, netbooks, and other wi-fi and internet devices provide new information tools that ordinary involved citizens can use to add detailed local information to Earth observation data. SWF focuses on developing the policy and legal framework for the institutions that deliver services. For example, in September 2010, SWF partnered with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in a workshop that highlighted the various uses of CRS techniques to improve the effectiveness of remotely sensed data for emergency response.
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