Kal-Haïti: a database for research, risk management and sustainable reconstruction in Haiti.
Résumé
On January the 12 2010, a Mw 7 earthquake struck Haiti causing more than 200 000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of injuries and massive building and infrastructures destruction. The international community promptly reacted with unprecedented efforts, providing a large quantity of information (i.e. surface displacement maps, temporal surface changes maps via the internet) and material help. After the initial phase of rescuing and first medical aid to the population the phase of reconstruction began and, in parallel, also began the scientific analysis aiming at better understanding the earthquake in terms of seismic hazard and risk assessment in the region. With this abstract, we wish to drive the scientific community attention to the project KAL-Haiti. The project KAL-Haiti, led by the French Space Agency (CNES) propose to sustain the reconstruction efforts and the scientific studies on the Haiti earthquake with a database built upon satellite imagery from optical and radar sensor acquired during the initial emergency phase and to be completed with long term, regularly acquired, satellite image data. The KAL-Haiti large number of satellite imagery data, both from radar and optical sensors, with different spatial and temporal resolution, would be integrated by field data collected during or before the 2010 paroxysm. In this way the data would span a large time interval, covering the cycle "prevention-reconstruction-resilience". The project KAL-Haïti is approved and financed by the French "Agence National de la Recherche" in 2010. KAL-Haiti will be a database of qualified satellite and in situ data open for free to the scientific community and aims at helping research institution in performing fundamental research and practical actions corresponding to real needs. The project aims at developing a reference support infrastructure for decision making, promoting fundamental and applied research activities on the Haiti area beyond the 2010 earthquake crisis period.