National System on Monitoring Natural Disasters OperationalA national system monitoring natural disasters became operational Tuesday after a trial of two years.Li Jiren, chief scientist in charge of the major research program told Xinhua Tuesday that the monitoring system can help policy-makers adopt effective measures for disaster relief. He said the system is only part of a major national scientific research program + research and development on remote sensing, a geological information system and a global positioning system, which passed experts' appraisal here Tuesday. Li said, disaster relief is a major research subject for realizing sustainable social development. He said the system focuses on heavy floods and draughts and can provide high-resolution images of disaster-hit areas or targets to the Beijing-based monitoring center. With the building of basic data banks of land use, telecommunications, pastures, forests, and water conservation projects and some other data banks, scientists can quickly compare the basic data with that of the disaster-related data and evaluate the losses brought about by the disasters. The monitoring system was jointly built by five research units including the State Remote Sensing Center and the Space Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Chinese scientists have cooperated with scientists from the Europe Space Agency in the research of flood and draught monitoring. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |