A congress of the University of Navarra addresses the scientific use of satellite images to develop effective urban planning policies to help combat poverty. It is organized by the Navarre Center for International Development (NCID) of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) and has had speakers from the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as the European Commission.

Ángela Abascal, predoctoral researcher at NCID and promoter of the event, explains that many African cities are experiencing exponential population growth, "a phenomenon that Europe has already experienced at other times in its history, but with much higher figures". According to the expert, agreement , these cities do not have the capacity to absorb all this new population and therefore "suburbs -slums- are emerging that are characterized by overcrowding, lack of infrastructure both at home and in the street and the accumulation of garbage". He mentions the case of Mathare, the second largest slum in Nairobi (Kenya), where up to 69,000 people live per square kilometer.

Multidimensional overview of the suburbs.

"Socioeconomic indicators do not provide a complete picture of what causes a area to be marginal," says the researcher. For this reason, several academics (IDEAMAPS Network) are calling for a more holisticapproach , making use of new tools such as satellite images, cell phone applications and GPS to analyze poverty. "They contribute to obtaining a multidimensional and more realistic picture of the slums," she explains.

"Thanks to these images, we can find out how much garbage accumulates in an area or how close a hospital or a school is," adds the researcher. She affirms that, in this way, the data from these tools and the opinions gathered from the inhabitants of these suburbs "help to better understand the real urban problems where these people live".

The workshop will feature Monika Kuffer, professor at the University of Twente (The Netherlands); Stefanos Georganos, researcher of the Royal Swedish Technology high school ; Pere Roca, IT developer at the United Nations and the European Commission; and Anthony Boanada-Fuchs, from high school St. Gallen of management in Latin America (Switzerland). 

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