Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

Abstract:
Natural disasters, changing environmental conditions, and violent regional conflicts are main drivers for population displacement. Worldwide, more than 50 million people are displaced. One tragic example of huge displacement due to a conflict situation is the Republic of South Sudan, where 1.7 million people have been forced to flee their homes since December 2013. Most of them found refuge in numerous spontaneous settlements, either camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) within the country, or refugee camps in neighbouring countries. In such crisis situations, humanitarian organisations often do not have access to the areas and only have vague information on the location and amount of affected population. Using very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, rumours about displaced people can be generally verified or falsified, while for areas where displaced people gather, information on amount and spatial distribution of dwellings can be extracted for population estimates. Such information assists in planning services like health care or vaccination campaigns and planning of needed infrastructure like boreholes, latrines or hospitals. Camps in the setup and construction phase are often highly dynamic and require regular monitoring. Beyond this emergency phase, specific information is also requested by organisations involved in camp management in all other phases of humanitarian crisis response, i.e. in the care and maintenance phase, as well as the repatriation phase.