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The Department of Interface Design of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam in Germany contributed to the design of key elements of the portal, including the Space Application Matrix (“SAM”) search engine. 16. In 2012, UN-SPIDER conducted an internal evaluation of the portal at the request of the Office for Outer Space Affairs to identify how the portal should be improved. (...) The home page provides access to the most recent news from the three communities, quick access to the Space Application Matrix search engine, the network of regional support offices, events conducted by UN-SPIDER and its most relevant publications. (...) As a worldwide service, UN-SPIDER relies heavily on this approach. Therefore, it is important to track how well search engine scripts crawl through the portal pages.

In order to strengthen the capacity of the National Emergency Management Agency of Nigeria to use space-based information to respond to floods in the country, UN-SPIDER conducted an online training course on flood mapping with Sentinel -1 radar imagery in Google Earth Engine. (...) UN-SPIDER mapped flooding along the Niger River in Nigeria through the UN-SPIDER recommended practice on flood mapping and damage assessments using Sentinel-1 radar imagery in Google Earth Engine; (c) To the General Directorate for Civil Protection of the Niger in responding to floods and wildfires in the country in October and November 2020. UN-SPIDER mapped floods along the Niger river using Sentinel-1 radar data and created a map indicating active fire hotspots to assess the burn severity of affected vegetation using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery in Google Earth Engine; (d) UN-SPIDER and its visiting scientists created a number of maps of rural areas in the State of Oaxaca that were hit by landslides triggered by an earthquake on 23 June 2020.

The funding of UN-SPIDER includes generous financial support from China and Germany. (...) In particular, the project fostered SDG 5, on gender equality: seven women were part of the team that built the satellites, and they participated in several outreach activities for girls and women in Guatemala, for example, by contributing to teaching a module about Quetzal-1 in a “Women in Engineering” course for high school girls supported by the United States Embassy in Guatemala. (...) On 11 February, the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, UNOOSA launched the Space4Women website that provides a variety of features to promote gender equality in the space and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sectors. The launch was announced at a dedicated side event during the fifty-seventh session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee (STSC) of COPUOS.

The lectures covered climate change and disaster risk reduction, adaptation to enhanced floods, concepts of flood inundation mapping, the operational flood alert system of ISRO, monitoring and damage assessment using space technologies, the global flood detection system and flood inundation modelling using software tools developed by the Hydrological Engineering Centre of the Army Corps of Engineers of the United States of America. (...) The conference was co-organized by UN-SPIDER and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, in collaboration with the Department of Treaty and Law of China, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, the Department of System Engineering of China, the China National Space Administration (CNSA), the Department of Social Security of China, the Ministry of Finance of China and the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization (APSCO), and with the support of DigitalGlobe. (...) The congress was organized by the Biomedical Engineering Society (Singapore) and the Hydroinformatics Society (Singapore) with the support of the National University of Singapore and the Asian Development Bank.

The training course, which was held from 21 March to 7 April 2022, was designed to provide students with an introduction to the use of geographic information system tools, including QGIS and Google Earth Engine, and analytical methods for analysis and remote sensing. (...) The Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission of Pakistan, which is a UN-SPIDER regional support office, provided a recommended practice on the topic “Agriculture drought monitoring and hazard assessment using Google Earth Engine”. 57. (...) Examples include the use of online data analytics platforms and systems such as Google Earth Engine in recommended practices and the promotion of web-based systems and applications such as the ESA Charter Mapper tool for the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters.

The portal makes available good prac- tices, data sources, tools and lessons learned as well as news, events and training course announcements to the different communities. UN-SPIDER’s Space Application Matrix is a search engine providing access to over 200 case studies and scientific papers. (...) As the portal’s central search engine to over 200 case studies and scientific papers, the Space Application Matrix offers access to more specific information. (...) UN-SPIDER’S PARTNERS UN-SPIDER works closely with its network of regional and national partners and benefits from different types of support.

UN-SPIDER has offices in Beijing, Bonn and Vienna and is funded with generous financial support from China and Germany. (...) The pages on the Committee sessions and capacity-building activities of the Office also experienced significant traffic over the year. Visits to the UN-SPIDER Knowledge Portal also reached record numbers. (...) Vickram Bissonauth, research coordinator from the Mauritius Research and Innovation Council ” “ 12 | UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS UNOOSA, BRAZIL AND THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES CONVENE SPACE FOR WOMEN EXPERT MEETING: INITIATIVES, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN IN SPACE Science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) represent transformative fields to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with space exploration and its utilization as vital components in this context.

UN-SPiDER AT A GLANCE 2 02. TEN YEARS OF UN-SPiDER iN BEiJiNG 6 03. (...) UN-SPIDER Beijing conference in 2011 Photo credit: UNOOSA 05. (...) UN-SPIDER international training programme in 2017. Photo credit: UNOOSA UN-SPIDER Beijing conference in 2017.