David Windsor - Australia's acting deputy permanent representative to the UN in addressing the "Crisis Management Landscape Evolving, Fourth Committee" said that "Space had increasingly become an integral part of everyday life. Benefits derived from space applications had transformed the way people looked at their environment and planet, ways of communicating and interacting, and how people move from one place to another, dramatically increasing safety, security, accuracy, predictability and convenience in daily life."
He went on to point out that Australia was reliant on others for satellites and launch facilities, but that Australia was in the process of developing a national space policy - which would lay out a vision of Australia's future space efforts. He also identified how important environmental monitoring has become for climate change, deforestation, landslides and droughts, and comment on the success of the Sentinel Asia early warning system within the region.
David also noted that Australia uses space-based technology to support many neighbouring countries in our region, including Geoscience Australia's use of high resolution multi-spectral data from the "Quickbird" Satellites - as part of a comprehensive tsunami risk assessment.
It is clear that Australia is stepping up its involvement in the space sector - and most importantly, there is an increasing knowledge and understanding within the Australian Government of the benefits that Space Technologies bring to Australia.
Good reading yoour post
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