Nigerian Earth Observation Systems

Nigeria is one of the countries in Africa that have taken steps towards establishing a National Geospatial Data Infrastructure (NGDI). The NGDI system and data holdings will effectively address Nigeria's geospatial data needs which are germane to her socio-economic development. Accurate geospatial products and the NGDI capabilities and benefits provided by a common standardized geospatial clearing house accessible by key government agencies and regional governments within the country will be used for infrastructure, contingency, and security planning, environmental monitoring (especially in the Niger Delta), etc.

There is a strong economic justification for national investment in the collection and management of fundamental GI as component of National Information Infrastructure. This view has been corroborated by the World Bank's African privatisation expert (Meyerman, 2004) who blamed the inability of the African countries to compete in the international market to the lack of infrastructure in spite of the huge resources at their disposal. He noted that infrastructure is one of the biggest challenges to meet the millennium development goals (MDGs) in Africa. According to him, "Africa would need $15 billion a year in infrastructure financing to achieve seven percent economic growth in order to halve extreme poverty by 2015 and to reach the millennium development goals."

The vision therefore is to ensure that GI permeate every aspect of the society and that they should be available to people who need them, when they need them, and in a form that they can use them to make decisions with minimal pre-processing (UNECA, 2001) by integrating GI into the centre-stage of national information and communication infrastructure (NICI). The most efficient and effective way to achieve the above is through the implementation of a national geospatial data infrastructure (NGDI).

Due to increasing awareness of the use of GI for decision-making over the past years, coupled with the expected availability of primary dataset from the Nigerian earth observation satellites, the country has realized the need to adopt policies for promoting greater awareness and public access to standard and coordinated geo-spatial data production, management and dissemination by all sectoral institutions.

NGDI as a system will provide the hardware, software, and processes necessary to house, manage, produce, share, distribute, and utilize Geospatial Products and Services. The NGDI will include a metadata catalog describing the holdings within NGDI; storage capabilities to house significant quantities of geoinformation; mechanisms to enable timely access and sharing of the holdings; and tools to enable analysts and other end users to use the NGDI holdings to address sustainable development. The NGDI will be implemented as a phased development.

Ilorin, Nigeria (ILO) [Lat - 8.53, Lon - 4.57] is a CERES ARM Validation Experiment [CAVE] station which is part of the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) under the World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC). BSRN is a project of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) aimed at detecting important changes in the earth's radiation field which may cause climate changes. At a small number of stations (fewer than 40) in contrasting climatic zones, covering a latitude range from 80°N to 90°S, solar and atmospheric radiation is measured with instruments of the highest available accuracy and at a very high frequency (minutes).

The Interstate Forecasting Centre IFC was established in 1985 within the framework of HYDRONIGER Project for the benifit of the 9 Niger Basin Authority (NBA) member countries namely; Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria, with the financial assistance from Donor Organisations such as the UNDP , EEC and OPEC, while the WMO was the supervising agent. The IFC under the NBA, in Niamey (the Niger Republic), has it primary objectives to assist the riparian countries in protecting the life and goods of their citizen, to augment food security and hydro-power, minimising the catastrophic effect of draught and flood. It's immediate objective was to establish a real time hydrological forecasting system covering river Niger and it's major tributaries.

The Centre is equipped with an Argos Station Direct Receiver (ASDR) which, through NOAA satellites using ARGOS teletansmiting system, receives numerical signals emited by the Data Collection Platforms (DCP) that were stationed along the river Niger and its major tributaries. These DCP measure the fluctuation of river stage (depth). The frequency of reception by the ASDR from ARGOS satellite is usually between 3 to 5 times daily.

Geomatics Nigeria Limited; Associate of Terfa Inc. selected satellite images (SPOT, LANDSAT, JERS-1, and ERS-1) acquired between 1976 and 1995 to cover all of Nigeria and to analyse change over this period. Images were analysed at 1:150,000 and mapped at 1:250,000 using easi-pace and arc-info. Ground-truthing occurred in all habitat types and existing land use regions. A follow-up study was made in 1997-98, using RADARSAT and some further work was done in 1995-99 to map forest reserves in more detail. Environmental, geological, socio-economic, and land use data were collected and digitized.

Remotely sensed data have been used in many vector disease studies. In Kwara State, Nigeria, a temporal analysis of Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data was used in 1992 to test the significance of the guinea worm eradication program based on changes in agricultural production.

The Agency launched its first satellite, Nigeriasat-1, into 686km orbit on 27th September, 2003 from Plesetsk, Russia. The satellite has since been capturing high quality images which have been used in many applications locally. NASRDA has again advanced in the implementation of the national space policy through the proposed launch of a second Earth Observation Satellite, NIgeriaSat-2, with a training model, NigeriaSat-X, in the first quarter of 2010.