Beginning of Non-Technical Survey for UDA
In June 2023, the NGO Ukrainian Deminers Association (UDA) received its own certificate of compliance with the Non-Technical Survey of territories (hereinafter – NTS). Since that time, we have been actively implementing NTS of Ukrainian territories. In fact, immediately after receiving the permit, the first NTS group was deployed in Kyiv region. And from August 2023 until now, our organization has already deployed four NTS groups in the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Mykolaiv regions, which successfully fulfill their tasks.
Befofe receiving the certificate, the UDA also carried out humanitarian demining of territories in cooperation with one of our implementing partners – the national mine action operator Demining Solutions. But our own certificate has significantly strengthened our capabilities in this direction.
What is an NTS?
A non-technical survey (NST) is the first step in humanitarian demining, which helps in the collection and analysis of data on the presence, type, distribution of mines and explosive objects (UXO), as well as the fastest way to return areas to their intended use.
NTS is the first step towards clearing our lands of explosives, and it is also one of the methods to exclude lands from the hazardous category. On the scale of potentially dangerous territories of Ukraine that exist today (according to the National Mine Action Authority it is more than 156,000 km2), NTS is one of the most rational solutions.
Our NTS Activities
For almost 9 months of our NTS work, we have already had several monitoring visits, both internally, from the office, and from our partners and donors. One of them was in December last year, a monitoring visit of representatives of the partner organization Danish Support Group Ukraine took place. Our partners took part in the NTS of one of the UDA groups, in the village of Oleksandrivka, Kazankiv district, Mykolaiv region. During the survey of a head of the village and local farmers, information was obtained regarding the location of a 300-mm fragment of a 9M-55K Reactive volley fire system Smerch. The NTS group took measures in accordance with the organization’s NTS SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and the established procedures.
At the end of 2023, our specialists mastered the skills of conducting risk assessment and non-technical survey of buildings. At the beginning of 2024, in partnership with MAG Ukraine, with the financial support of FCDO, UK government, we started to conduct NTS of buildings at critical infrastructure facilities. This is a new experience for UDA that we will continue to develop. Part of the UDA sapper’s work and the areas of work can be seen in the photos below.
As of today the result of work in the Mykolaiv region are: survey of 443 932 999 m2 of territories, identification of five dangerous zones and preparation of 34 IMSMA reports.
In addition to direct work in the field, law-making activity is one of the main directions of the organization’s work. In February of this year, the UDA representatives took part in the development of national standards regarding: land-release, mechanical land-release and non-technical survey, as well as the National Mine Action Strategy, which was recently adopted at the meeting of the National Authority for Mine Action.
At the same time, we continue work on improving the training programs for deminers, “humanitarian demining specialists”, in particular, NTS.
With the help of our partner Demining Solutions, we also participate in the training and professional development of humanitarian demining specialists. In March of this year, at one of our field bases, we refreshed our knowledge of non-technical survey. One of the key issues was the training of UAV operators.
NTS Results and Prospects
The NTS is a part of the organization’s project work. Currently, the mentioned activities are carried out within the framework of four humanitarian projects, which are implemented with the financing of international donors: Danish Support Group Ukraine, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs / OCHA Ukraine, Ukraine Humanitarian Fund, Mine Advisory Group Ukraine, Danish Support Group Ukraine and Canada-Ukraine Foundation. We are grateful to our partners for their help in implementation of such important projects for our country!
From August to December last year, the UDA managed to survey about 1,737 km2 of territories, which were checked and reported to the Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA). During the entire period of our NTS work (in 2023-2024), we managed to survey about 3,791 km2 of territories. During this period, in total, over 160 reports were submitted to the IMSMA system by our specialists.
In the future, we plan to continue and strengthen work in this direction. The UDA team is working to ensure that the entire territory of Ukraine is free of explosive remnants of war! Every day we work on the development of the NTS, not only expanding the geography of survey territories, but also increasing our capabilities, professionalism and work efficiency.
The results of all UDA’s project work in 2023 can be found in the article “Achievements and results of the UDA work in 2023“.
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