New DVD "Charter in Action "

The main objective of the Charter is to provide remote sensing data in major catastrophes in order to help mitigating the effects of disasters on human life and property.

The new DVD "Charter in Action" has been produced with the aim of describing the activities of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters and its usefulness in promoting international cooperation.

Charter members, as well as companies involved in data processing, all contributed to the production of the DVD: test cases, satellite images and supporting maps were provided with the objective to cover examples of Charter activations in all the continents and for most type of disasters.

One of the earliest activations was the Mount Nyiragongo Volcano Eruption in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002, when in only three days the local authorities were provided with satellite data maps for choosing refugee camp sites.

For the Oil Spill off the Coast of Galicia in Spain in 2002, the remote sensing satellites Envisat, ERS and RADARSAT supplied almost daily images, piercing the clouds and bad weather to track this major oil spill.

Again, the Charter was triggered in December 2004 by the United Nations for the devastating earthquake and tsunami in southern Asia, which killed a quarter of a million people in many different countries. Very quickly, more than 250 scale maps covering the affected areas from various sources were provided.

On the occasion of the Hurricane Katrina, which hit the state of Louisiana in the United States in 2005, the Charter was activated with the main objectives of providing reference and crisis maps of the affected areas: these maps were invaluable for estimating the damage and for guiding rescue teams in the areas underwater.

Also in the case of forest fires (for example when fires hit Portugal in 2005 or Greece in 2007) the Charter was triggered to provide the authorities with crisis mapping products for use in rescue operations.
In the case of Portugal, the images - taken at intervals over a month - provided the large-scale overview that was essential to calculate the burned areas as well as to analyse the way that the fires propagated.

The last example shown of a Charter activation is the extensive flooding in Bolivia in 2007, when satellite images of the floods contributed to provide a true perspective of the inundated plains and the means to evaluate the impact on agriculture, the main resource of the local population.

• Contact the ESA Earth Observation Helpdesk for more information on the Charter DVD.