Funded by the Space Climate Observatory from October 2020 to April 2022
VIETSCO, the Vietnam Space Climate Observatory, is a SCO-labelized project with two central components, VIMESCO-Rice and VIET-ARRO.
Domestic rice production in Vietnam is under threat as a result of climate change, flooding, droughts and saltwater intrusion. The objective of the VIMESCO-Rice project is to provide users in Vietnam with a demonstrator of operational tools for the dynamic monitoring of rice crops using Sentinel-1 radar remote sensing data, to map information that complements in-situ data and statistics (rice crop surface area, crop calendar, productivity indicators, number of harvests per year).
Vietnam is one of the countries most exposed to extreme climate-change related events such as typhoons. In the case of such an event, emergency response mechanisms are activated, with Earth observation-based data being sent to civil protection agencies for use in producing emergency response maps. However, this stops after a few days. The aim of the VIET-ARRO project is to set up a Resilient Recovery Observatory for agriculture in Vietnam, relying primarily on satellite observation data. In the event of a major disaster with a severe impact on agricultural output, the observatory could be activated by local or national government or by international development aid organisations.
In the frame of the VIMESCO-Rice and VIET-ARRO projects, information, data and products will be provided free of charge and open access.
Video VietSCO