G-MOSAIC – GMES Services for Management of Operations, Situation Awareness and Intelligence for regional Crises
Within the context of the GMES Initiative, the G-MOSAIC pilot project identifies and develops products, methodologies and pilot services for the provision of geospatial information in support of EU external relations policies, as well as contributes to defining and demonstrating the sustainability of the GMES global security components.
G-MOSAIC will develop services for the security realm which:
1. Support intelligence and early warning with the objective to deploy and validate those information services that contribute to analyzing the causes leading to regional crises, such as weapon proliferation, fights over natural resources, population pressure, land degradation, and illegal activities.
DFD is in charge of the “Illegal Activities” work package with its objective to develop and operate three service chains to provide information on (1) illegal mining, (2) illegal timber logging and (3) illicit crops.
The illegal mining service chain will contribute to providing a comprehensive picture of mining activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, answering such questions as:
- Where are the locations of active sites?
- Who is involved in the mining operations (industrial companies or artisanal miners)?
- What activities are performed, how long have they been going on, and is there evidence of functioning transportation routes?
The logging activities in specific districts of the Democratic Republic of Congo are the subject of the second service chain, illegal logging, which will attempt to answer such questions as:
- Where are there changes in canopy cover and structure?
- Can indicators for logging be detected (recent logging, slash-and-burn activities, changes in the road networks of forest estates)?
Finally, a service chain for illicit crops will contribute to answering such questions as:
- Where are the main areas of illicit crop cultivation?
- Are the policies against illegal crop cultivation effective?
- What are the trends in these areas?
To achieve these objectives, DFD is working closely with users: BICC, BKA, Global Witness, and UNODC.
1. Support Crisis Management Operations with the objective to deploy and validate those information services that contribute to planning EU intervention during crises, repatriation of populations, managing consequences, reconstruction measures and regional stability.
DFD is mainly contributing to the development of two service chains within the “Consequence management, reconstruction and resilience” work package, focusing on (1) damage assessment for post-conflict situations and (2) support for reconstruction missions after conflicts. The first has the goals of systematic quality assessment of damage indicators derived from earth observation data and estimating the monetary cost of the damage observed with the help of ancillary socio-economic information. The second chain will focus on monitoring the development and improvement of infrastructure using a semi-automatic procedure. It will incorporate the expertise of image processing staff and the experience gained from the LIMES project in planning and monitoring reconstruction.