Synthetic Aperture Radars for humanitarian purposes: Products and opportunities

In this paper we present the available products and the future opportunities derived by the use of Synthetic Aperture Radar data for humanitarian projects. A set of images relevant to an area of the Sahel, in Burkina Faso have been used for supporting the proposed claims. Along with the technical problems related with the image interpretation, we focus on the economic accessibility of the data, that mainly limited the use of SAR images in low income countries. The future availability of free access data makes their use very attractive, provided that appropriate knowledge is available for interpreting the images.