r bulletin 107 — august 2001

The ‘Space and Major Disasters’International Charter

J. Béquignon & S. BriggsEarth Observation Applications Department, ESA Directorate of Earth andEnvironment Monitoring from Space, ESRIN, Frascati, Italy

The ‘Space and Major Disasters’ Charter hasbeen in operation since 1 November 2000. CivilProtection Agencies may place their requestsfor assistance via a dedicated 24-hourtelephone line. A specialised engineer analysesthe situation together with the requestor andproposes an action plan, which includesemergency re-tasking of the satellites operatedby the Charter’s signatories. A project managerensures that the necessary data are acquiredand their timely delivery to the requestor ordesignated agent. During its first six months ofoperation, the Charter was invoked eight times.

France earlier this year. Twelve hours after theacquisition of an ERS-2 image, a preliminarymap of the flooded area covering 100 km of theSaône watercourse was provided to the reliefco-ordination centre in Lyon. The images inFigure 1 show how a mix of two radar images(before and during the flood) allows accuratedetection of the flooded areas. The map in themiddle clearly shows the flooded area in blue,with the normal riverbed in dark blue; the right-hand map highlights areas affected by the floodand allows urban or agricultural usage to beidentified. These maps represent a synthetic

Considering on the one hand the increasing number of majordisasters, and on the other the interest shown by Civil ProtectionAuthorities in space techniques, ESA and the French national spaceagency CNES announced their intention to set a co-ordinated means of access to space facilities and tools, at the UNISPACE IIIConference in Vienna in July 1999. The International Charter on ‘Spaceand Major Disasters’ was subsequently signed on 20 June 2000 byboth Agencies, followed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) on 20 October 2000.

This far-reaching humanitarian initiative provides a worldwide,consistent framework for accessing data from a variety of sources. Itis mainly oriented towards helping the emergency and rescueauthorities during a crisis. The Charter is open for signature to allspace agencies and operators, and a number of other agencies havealready announced their intention to join, including NOAA (USA), ISRO(India), CONAE (Argentina) and NASDA (Japan).

After the earthquake that struck San Salvadoron 13 February 2001, only 3 days were neededto re-task the Spot-4 satellite, to acquire thedata and to prepare damage-assessmentmaps, just in time for the French Civil Protectionrescue squad, which was arriving on a medical-assistance mission. As a by-product, theSalvadorian Geographical Survey requestedand was given the maps in order to update its25-year-old reference set.

The Charter was also invoked during the SaôneRiver flood, one of the many that affected

Figure 1. (a) A map of theSaône flood north of Lyon.

Flooded areas are shown inlight blue, the normal river

course in dark blue. Themap is obtained from a

fusion of optical and radardata. Landscape in pseudo-

natural colours. ExtendedLambert II projection, scale

in km

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Credits for the images: © ESA for ERS-2 data, © CNES and Spotimage for SPOT data, © SERTIT for processing

the space and major disasters charter

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snapshot and will serve as reference data forthis flood event in a decision support system.They will also be used as input to regulatoryflood-prevention plans. These maps wereobtained from a fusion of optical and radarimages from the Spot and ERS-2satellites.

The two examples above demonstratethe value of this co-operativeendeavour. Nowadays, what limits theoperational use of Earth Observationsatellites during a natural disaster ismore the number of satellites availablefor that purpose, rather than thetechnology itself.

The Charter has created a great deal ofinterest in Civil Protection and HumanitarianEmergency circles. It is being recognised as anefficient framework at international level, settingnew standards and serving as a reference.

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(b) The flood extent detected by acombination of two ERS SAR imagesappears in blue, near Villefranche-sur-Saône.

(c) The flood extent laid over a space mapderived from SPOT imagery The floodedareas are shaded in light blue

(d) This map reveals the nature of the floodedareas (urban/agriculture), while non-floodedareas are dimmed. Extended Lambert IIprojection, scale in km

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