ge amount of rapid mapping in the following days. Initially SERTIT produced potentially affected zone maps, based on terrain height above sea level. Event location space-maps were then produced within eight hours of receiving Very High Resolution (VHR) data. SERTIT's Rapid Mapping Service produced over 90 products for affected areas in Sri Lanka and Sumatra - Banda Aceh, Lho Nga and Meulaboh - alongside the Respond consortium. These products included event extent, event intensity and impact mapping.

This short-term crisis and damage mapping was not the end of the story, however. Respond members have gone on producing more maps since then, in response to longer-term needs of the humanitarian aid sector and ongoing rebuilding efforts of the communities and countries involved.

ZKI of DLR for example has provided dozens of maps to various relief organisations including German Red Cross (DRK), Mdecins Sans Frontires (MSF) and the German Technical Relief agency (THW). DRK has continued to use satellite derived pre- and post-tsunami maps extensively to supervise, direct and manage its reconstruction operations in the Calang area of Sumatra.

Meanwhile the town of Sigli in the east of Sumatra's Aceh province, home to 13 965 people, was two-thirds destroyed in the tsunami. Today more than 180 new homes are under construction (out of a planned 536), along with a new school and a repaired road. More than 40 small and motorised fishing boats have been built, along with 12 larger trawlers repaired and re-launched, at the same time as damaged harbour infrastructure has been reconstructed.

The work has been undertaken by French non-governmental organisation (NGO) Emergency Architects (Architects de l'Urgence or ADU), in cooperation with local architects and students of architecture. ADU is similarly active in the town of Muthur in the Trincomalee region of Sri Lanka, which was a fishing village left devastated in the tsunami's aftermath. Now som
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Contact: Mariangela D'Acunto
mariangela.dacunto@esa.int
39-069-418-0856
European Space Agency
23-Dec-2005

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