Human Rights and abuses –  SPACE Documentation 

PRINS Engineering was the first independent organisation to use Earth Observation for monitoring of human abuses by the study of burnt villages in Darfur which was carried out for the Danish branch of Amnesty International in May-June 2004. The study was used as main story in Amnesty Inteternationals global newsletter and was followed up and used in many contexts – The mapping was based upon a cost-effective novel method which PRINS eventually documented in International Journal of Remote sensing and the research was raised by Nature. In 2005 Amnesty commissioned a report for the potential use of Earth Observation as such for monitoring of humanitarian abuses this report has have been prospective and is still valid.  

Since the initial use of EO for monitoring of human abuses in 2004 a number of organizations have taken on the responsibility to carry out analysis of human abuses based upon self explaining Very High Resolution images (VHR). However, the bottleneck of using VHR is the cost and limited coverage – prices start from thousands of dollars for achieves images with only limited spatial (usually 12 x 12 km) and temporal coverage. The result is limited surveyed area at a very high cost – consequently a lot of effort can be given to map a large scale situation like Darfur – however, it has not lead to any documentation on the spatial organisation of the abuses - as well as no running large scale monitoring of the situation and what have happen in the ‘no-go’ areas.   

we can ADD the large scale overview.

When indications of on human right abuses are turning up they are often imprecise – however, we will be able to quickly deliver an overview of a situation at a very low cost. We are also using VHR – but usually for verification of our models in a very cost effective way.

We provide big advantages by combining the use of medium-high resolution imagers with VHR – our use of VHR is usually for verification of our analysis.

Our experience with EO is unquestionable - we have worked more than 20 years with analysis in developing countries and know the drivers from extensive field experiences and thus are a step ahead in the interpretation and analysis of the images.