Press Release: Better flow of satellite data for better management of environmental and security crises

Natural and manmade catastrophes in Europe, America, Asia and Africa, coupled with increased security needs, have further reinforced the need for earth observation systems. The GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) ensures that crisis situations like floods, forest fires or earthquakes can be better anticipated and managed through monitoring the state of our environment. To supply space data in a seamless, integrated, timely and secure way to the GMES users the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed a 48 million € grant for a coordinated provision of space-based observation data for GMES for its pre-operational phase 2008-2010. This new coherent and cost-efficient approach prefigures an operational service that will offer a comprehensive and sustained supply of space-based earth observation data.