A satellite to study seismic activity including earthquake precursors was successfully put into orbit on 2 February as part of a joint Chinese-Italian project.
Satellite archives combined with new cloud computing platform offer early warning of landslides. An example of this is Carmenes del Mar resort, in the south coast of Spain. Combining radar images from various satellites, a team of Spanish researches from the group Analisis del Relieve y Procesos Activos (ARPA) could detect motion of less than a centimeter per year.
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) released some imagery from the satellite rainfall estimates for the current flood disasters in Sri Lanka. The Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) and Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) revealed that the extraordinary flooding in Sri Lanka was caused by unusually strong monsoonal rainfall over the period between 10 September and 30 September 2014.
Geo-referenced information Systems for Disaster Risk Management (Geo-DRM) is called the initiative launched by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to support the world’s most disaster prone countries build their capacities to recover from natural disasters.
The unit Mediterranean Ecosystems and Risks (EMAX) of the National Institute for Science Research and Technology for Environment and Agriculture (IRSTEA) will start testing the free smartphone app SIGNALERT, developed by the homonym start-up, that allows citizens to report about natural disasters.