Lluvia en tiempo real y sistema de alerta temprana por deslizamientos para Centro América, en base a imágenes de Satélite NOAA y aplicaciones con ArcObjects

Abstract

Central America confronts countless properties damages and invaluable lost in human lives because of natural phenomena like hurricanes and landslides. The frequency of these events increases and the governmental authorities need some analysis tools that combined with geo-spatial information allow avoiding a disaster. In consequence, since July 2006, BGR (Federal Institute of Geo-sciences and Natural Resources of Germany) and INETER (Nicaraguan Institute for Territorial Studies) work together in an Early Warning System for landslides in Central America. The System can be consulted by Web and is based on ArcObjects and C Sharp programming languages. From NOAA satellite images information of rainfall is obtained automatically. Since January 2007, this information have been processed and stored in an ArcSDE Geodatabase. The information of rainfall can be displayed in accumulated of 1,3,6,12 and 24 hours through a web map service. The system also is connected with the national network of meteorological stations therefore is possible to evaluate the precision of the NOAA estimations. In October 2007, the tool was used for monitoring the rainfall during Hurricane Felix. And was useful to know the rainfall in areas where doesn’t exist meteorological stations. Now the challenge is to combine the information of the rainfall, geological data, land use and slopes to establish thresholds for prediction of landslides. The thresholds will be calibrated with the landslides registered during the 2008.