NASDA's Remote Sensing Activities
In Thailand
2. Needs requested by researches to NASDA
There have been few research results using Japanese satellite data of Asian region until now. When AIT investigated ACRS proceedings, ESCAP journals etc, there were only six research papers utilizing Japanese satellite data of Asian region out of about 1,000 research topics. NASDA Bangkok office and AIT have conducted the questionnaire survey in order to find out the obstacles for data utilization, investigate the user's need and improve the data distribution dydtem. We got altogether 136 respondent's answers from researchers related to remote sensing fields in Asian region. The outline of this questionnaire survey results sre as follows (Table 1~10).
94 researches have experienced utilization of remote sensing satellite data out of 136 surveyed respondents. The type of satellite data used by experienced respondents are Landsat-TM 78%, SPOT 50%, Landsat-MSS 28%,NOAA 21%, JERS-OPS 12% etc.. The main reasons for not using Japanese satellite data are "Difficult to get/purchase", "Do not know how to request Japanese satellite data", "Easy access to other data", " Required coverage/data is not available". The problems encountered in reading satellite data are " Software cannot deal with the media", "Infrastructure hard disk capacity", "Too complicated procedure" etc.. The problems in purchasing data are "Expensive" etc.. The suggestions to promote Japanese satellite data are " Joint research project on Japanese satellite data", " Pilot project with applications", "Providing information to users", 'Training & Seminar " etc.. Generally speaking from what we surveyed, Japanese satellite data has not been utilized s much. I think there are no problems in data quality itself, but some difficulties to access and deal with data.
3. Data utilization scheme and measures to promote data utilization
Therefore we are now changing our efforts from mainly direct reception and system engineering towards mainly promotion of data utilization and user oriented activities, that is so-called from hardware to software (Figure 2)
I think this user oriented activities are composed of three factors in the data utilization scheme. The first factor is the pilot projects for capable users to promote data utilization. The second factor is the trainings and seminars for potential users. The third factor is the user friendly interface. The first & second factors are very important and the activities in these factors have been already explained in the promotion of cooperative project and data utilization above-mentioned. The third factor is also much important. However we have not managed this third factor so successfully. I would like to emphasize that we need smooth & rapid service system & organization. For example, we have to establish the good catalogue system and prepare the library of useful data of less than cloud 10%. We had better distribute the data by CD-ROM and in the useful data format for users. Our coverage map should be more useful including main rivers, main cities, country-province border lines etc.. The data promotion by mosaic data is much beneficial. We have to deliver the general informations to many users periodically (Figure 3). I think the combination of these three factors is important. Now NASDA Bangkok office would make efforts to improve these three factors of user oriented activities, because I think Japanese satellite data should be utilized more efficiently & widely in Asian countries than until now.
