IAP's Space Assets for Demining Assistance (SADA) projects investigate how space-enabled services can support Land Release in Mine Action. Three parallel studies have been implemented that have formulated conceptual services that will next be demonstrated in field settings. To ensure the intended SADA services are directly relevant to the Mine Action community, the users. involvement has been fundamental:
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| Photo 1: Demining demonstration during SADA field trip to Tajikistan. Credit: FSD/SADA. | Photo 2: The SADA teams at the IMSMA/SADA interface development workshop. Credit: GICHD. | Map 1: Geographical distribution of Mine Action user representatives so far involved in the SADA needs analysis. |
In particular, the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) plays an important role as ESA.s external advisor. The GICHD strives to provide capacity development support, undertake applied research, and develop standards, aimed at increasing the performance and professionalism of mine action. In an interview with ESA, GICHD representative Dr. Daniel Eriksson shares his views on the SADA project.
GICHD has supported the project definition, participates in project reviews, and has hosted a SADA discussion with the consortia and user community during the 14th International Meeting of National Mine Action Programme Directors and UN Advisors (March 2011). In August 2011, GICHD organized a training workshop for the SADA consortia in order to allow them to develop effective interfaces between SADA services and IMSMA, GICHD.s Information Management System for Mine Action in use by almost all Mine Action programs today.
In addition, a large number of operational Mine Action entities and user representatives have so far been involved in the SADA projects, e.g. through workshops and user surveys. One of the users, the Swiss Foundation for Demining (FSD), a relatively small but representative Swiss-based NGO, has provided a shared user needs baseline to the SADA participants from the field operator perspective, and has hosted interested SADA participants for a field visit to one of their demining sites in Tajikistan.
Now, in October 2011, the three SADA consortia will each initiate one or more Proofs of Concept to demonstrate their solutions to Mine Action users. Mine Action users in, amongst others, Bosnia i Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Chile will host these Proofs of Concept in order to:
- Iterate the service & system design
- Validate the foreseen performance against the user requirements
- Decide whether to support the development of a pre-operational service in a possible follow-up (Demo Project).