The Full Picture

Forest

– Improved forest class and biodiversity information at a

Pan European level.

Land carbon

– Understand and assess the impact of weather and

climate variability on terrestrial biospheric carbon fluxes in the

context of international conventions.

Natural resource monitoring in Africa

– Environmental monitor-

ing capacity in African countries.

Global crop monitoring

– Provides objective, real-time crop assess-

ment and yield forecasts to support EC policies in agriculture

(Common Agriculture Policy) and food security.

Next steps, new challenges and perspectives

The 2008-2010 period will be a key stage for the progress of GMES and

the success of its operational implementation. There are several key

challenges including, involving end-users and successfully collabo-

rating with the regional authorities; defining the balance between

mutualisation of resources at European level and

subsidiary at regional/member state level; building on

current preoperational services developed by the

European service industry; ensuring sustainable

public funding for the operation of core services; guar-

anteeing continuity of Earth observation sources and

increased coordination between satellite missions, cover-

ing sensor types, resolution and revisit; promoting

education, user training and public awareness, and coor-

dinating synergies and integration with other

international initiatives.

The Infoterra Group, along with all of its partners in

Europe, continue to contribute to the successful imple-

mentation of GMES, by providing geo-information

services, based on Earth observation data, to support the

day-to-day management of our changing world.

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Flood mapping using new high resolution SAR images

Launched in June, the TerraSAR-X satellite has already delivered extremely

impressive test images displaying a remarkably high level of detail and quality.

The satellite is a joint venture under a public-private-partnership between

DLR and Astrium. Astrium developed, built and launched the satellite; the

exclusive commercial exploitation rights are held by Infoterra.

In July 2007, as a demonstration of the system capacity, TerraSAR-X was

used to map the extent of the floods affecting the United Kingdom. Infoterra

by combining radar imagery from TerraSAR-X with aerial imagery, produced a

flood footprint to show the impact and extent of a flood at that point-in-time.

Infoterra has produced a set of information layers combining

real-time EO imagery and GIS data, very useful for the

decision-making during and after the crisis. Infoterra’s experts

also ran various simulations using these information

products.

In addition to the Charter satellite fleet, TerraSAR-X satellite

has been tasked to provide high resolution radar imagery of

other flooded areas, although the satellite is still in the

commissioning phase

GEOSS C

OMPONENTS

– D

ISSEMINATION

NFORMATION

YSTEMS