The Charter celebrated its 5th year with a special session organised by ISRO, October 4-5, 2005, at Bangalore.

[03 October 2005] - The International Charter on "Space and Major Disasters", a cooperation initiative created between the European Space Agency (ESA), the National Center on Space Studies of France (CNES) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will celebrate its 5th year with a special session of the charter organised by ISRO during October 4-5, 2005, at Bangalore.

The Charter has been providing access to value added earth observation satellite data from all parties to countries whose populations are exposed to risk or have been affected by a natural or technological disaster. Since November 2000, the Charter has been activated more than 80 times to assist in emergencies such as floods, fires, landslides, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, oil spills, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes and civil accidents which occurred all around the globe.

With a low response time of 38 to 48 hours and by facilitating high reliability data, the Charter has proved the effectiveness of space information for emergency management. During December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami disaster in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Thailand, no less than 200 sensor images acquired from satellites owned or operated by the Charter members were distributed. The Charter also provided space information in the Hurricane Katrina during which levees were breached and floodwaters submerged the city of New Orleans on 29 August 2005.

The fifth anniversary celebration function will be presided over by Dr G.Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO/Secretary, DOS. Mr.Jean-Luc Bessis of CNES will deliver the keynote address on Disaster management. Charter functionaries from CNES, CONAE, CSA, ESA, ISRO, JAXA, NOAA and USGS will participate in the proceedings. Representatives from UN and DMC will also take part. The participants will deliberate on the impact of the Charter, its performance, capabilities of Remote Sensing for Disaster Management, the response to recent disasters, etc.