From September 17th to 22nd ,2015, training program on “Earth observation technologies for earthquake damage and loss assessment” was jointly organized by Beihang University, Regional Center for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (China) (affiliated to the United Nations), UNOOSA/UN-SPIDER, National Disaster Reduction Center of China (NDRCC) and APSCO. A total of 31 participants from 19 countries participated in the training program, including Bhutan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand ,Peru, Mongolia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Burma, Mozambique, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela, Algeria, Ethiopia, Brazil and China. Among them, 27 participants was respectively sponsored by the Center, UN-SPIDER Beijing Office and APSCO.Some postgraduates from Beihang University majoring in international space technology application also attended the training program.

Training covered theory and hands on sessions on following topics: Role of earth observation in providing critical information during earthquake disaster; Rapid mapping using earth observation during earthquake situations; Concepts of earthquake damage and loss assessment; Visual interpretation, object-oriented segmentation and classification to facilitate change detection of pre and post-disaster based on VHR satellite imagery to perform structural damage assessment; Semi-automated techniques to extract information on buildings and other infrastructure and integrating it with population and risk data to evaluate casualties and losses; Crowd source platforms to use EO to perform rapid assessment; Advance techniques to access satellite images during emergencies and so on.