Event Summary
Speakers
- Clara Tessler, Senegal Flying Labs, Senegal
- Aziz Kountche, Drone Africa Services, Niger
- Stephen Mather, OpenDroneMap
- Colonel Major Bako, Directeur Général de la Protection civile au Ministère de l’Intérieur, Niger
- Ismaila Seye, UrbaSEN
- Moderator: Cristiano Giovando, Geospatial Technology Specialist, World Ban
Description
Friday November 22, 14:00 – 15:30 Room 2
This session will explore the role of drones in disaster risk management, how national regulations are being developed across Africa, business models for local pilots and organizations, project applications, and technological challenges.
Speaker bios
Clara Tessler Originally from New York, Clara Tessler has spent three working years in francophone Africa. Having consulted with a local NGO in Cameroon and completed her Peace Corps Service in Burkina Faso, Clara returned to New York to complete her MPA in Development Practice from Columbia University’s SIPA where she focused on food and nutrition security and developed a passion for tech solutions within rural development. Clara has now relocated to Abidjan where she is working in ag-tech and project management.
Aziz Kountche, Director, Founder of Drone Africa Service was born in 1983 in Niamey.
passionate about aeronautics, he is a drone pilot, builder, trainer on unmanned aircraft. he is
also a light aircraft pilot and specialist in aerial image acquisition.
Aziz has already participated in several missions in various fields such as, understanding risk
management, humanitarian missions, the fight against poaching and the preservation of the
environment.
Stephen Mather has been working in GIS, planning, and related fields since 1998, working since 2008 as the GIS Manager for Cleveland Metroparks. He has been interested in the application of computer vision to geospatial analyses since 2004, and founded the OpenDroneMap project (http://opendronemap.org), a project to bring together and extend a suite of open source computer vision software for use with UAS (drone) and street level images. The scalability and distributability of OpenDroneMap as free and open source software has led to its adoption across sectors, with notable users in conservation, development, and disaster response.
Le colonel major Bako Boubacar est Officier supérieur Force Armée Nigérienne. Il a à son actif plus de 25 ans de carrière chez les sapeurs pompiers, plusieurs participations à des missions des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo et Côte d’Ivoire. Pendant quatre ans, il a aussi été commandant du Groupement National des sapeurs pompiers du Nige. Depuis 2015, il est Directeur Général de la Protection civile au Ministère de l’Intérieur, de la Sécurité Publique, de la Décentralisation, des Affaires Coutumières et Religieuses. Sous son impulsion la direction générale de la protection civile a été modernisée et renforcée à travers notamment la mise en place des principes fondamentaux de l’organisation de la protection civile ; l’élaboration des plans d’organisation des secours (plans ORSEC) ou la définition du code d’alerte national. Il poursuit le renforcement de la protection civile du Niger avec la création de l’école nationale de la protection civile qui dispense une licence professionnelle de protection civile reconnue par le ministère de l’enseignement supérieur. Il est l’artisan de la création du centre opérationnel de veille d’alerte et de conduite de crise COVACC et de l’intégration des drones dans les outils de la protection civile. Il est Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Niger et a été décoré de la Médaille française de la défense nationale, échelon « Or » en 2018.
Ismaila Seye UrbaSEN is a Senegalese association that brings together professionals around urban issues. It is committed to vulnerable populations and works to improve their living environment.
This association plays the role of technical support structure and accompaniment of the
Senegalese Federation of the Inhabitants (FSH) which it contributed to set up and which
became in 2014 member of Slum Dwellers International.
Ismaila Seye, born in 1987 in NDiakhate, president of the association OpenStreetMap Senegal
and voting member of HOT, discovered the OSM project in 2012 by working at the town hall of
Grand Dakar where he set up the data capture shared around the OSM project on the whole of
the commune of Grand Dakar.
Cristiano Giovando is a technology innovator and mapping specialist at the World Bank. With 15 years of international experience in the field of geographic information, he applies the principles of open data and open source software to disaster risk management and humanitarian projects.