After the severe earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ was activated on the morning of the 11 March 2011. All participating institutions were asked to provide satellite imagery of the affected area.
Satellite imagery may serve as a source of information in all phases throughout the disaster cycle. In the preparedness phase, risk assessment is an important tool to support disaster management and spatial planning activities in order to minimize potential future impacts. Here, remote sensing can provide important information to perform risk and vulnerability assessments, such as land use information or inventories of exposed elements and facilities.
Following an invitation by the Head of the German Permanent Mission to the UN, H.E. Ambassador Rüdiger Lüdeking, representatives of the Missions to the International Organizations in Vienna attended a presentation on “Benefits of Space-based Support to Disaster Management”, which was organized by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and held on the premises of the German Permanent Mission on 3 November. Welcomed by Ambassador Lüdeking, and Ms.
Programme and activities of UN-SPIDER were presented at this year’s meeting of the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRS-S), which was held on November 6-7 in Miami, Florida. In his presentation, Robert Backhaus highlighted the global UN-SPIDER network, the SpaceAid Framework and the Knowledge Portal. GRS-S seeks to advance science and technology in geoscience, remote sensing and related fields using conferences, education, and other resources (http://www.grss-ieee.org/).
The GMES User Forum was organized by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development (BMVBS) together with the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and in close cooperation with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). It brought together about 120 participants from a large number of German institutions, national agencies, and leading private companies for discussions with high-level representatives from the European Commission and the German Government.
The construction of the German radar satellite TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) is complete and the satellite has been qualified for space operations during a series of tests conducted at IABG in Ottobrunn, near Munich. As with its 'twin' satellite TerraSAR-X, the TanDEM-X project has been implemented as a public-private partnership (PPP) between the German Aerospace Centre (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) and Friedrichshafen-based Astrium GmbH.
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