GMES Emergency Response - Two years of EO-based Rapid Mapping

Within the 7th research framework programme of the European Commission the SAFER project aims at developing and providing a pre-operational version of the GMES Emergency Response Service (ERS). A main component of this is the rapid mapping service called Emergency Mapping. Within this service satellite-based information products are generated covering natural or man-made disasters, like for the Haiti Earthquake, the Poland, Romanian and Pakistan floods, the Xynthia storm in France and the alkali mud flow in Hungary (examples are shown in this paper). Overall, the Emergency Service’s main objective is to set up a pre-operational service based on precursor projects’ services and user collaboration to set in motion the basis for future operational environments in the GMES Initial Operations (GIO) and further on in a fully operational context. Besides the regular service provision which increased from 22 activations in year 1 to 51 in year 2, the service focuses on further improving the service structure, the portfolio and the technical background to target improvements in response time and the quality of the crisis map products. In total more than 600 crisis products were generated during the first two years of GMES Emergency Mapping. Following the project’s initiation process and the setting up of the SAFER Emergency operational model, service provision is well structured and performs smoothly, benefiting from the long lasting experience of the initially involved service providers. Lessons learned during the first year were immediately analysed and resulting improvements have already been implemented