SAFER - Services and Applications for Emergency Response

On January 1, 2009, the EU project “SAFER - Services and Applications for Emergency Response” started. Its aim is to develop the existing satellite based emergency response service into an operational service (ERS - Emergency Response Service). The three year project will be coordinated by InfoTerra France and involve 54 partners, 29 private and 25 public organizations, from 16 countries.

In SAFER, the GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) emergency response service will be prepared for implementation  as an operational ERS. It will be based on the recommendations of the implementation group, build on the results of former projects (PREVIEW, RISK-EOS, RESPOND, TERRAFIRMA, LIMES, BOSS4GMES), and integrate existing European capacities for validating and qualifying operational performance. The main focus is on emergency situations associated with meteorologically-driven hazards (e.g., fires, floods), geophysical hazards (e.g., earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides), manmade disasters (e.g., chemical incidents) as well as humanitarian disasters. The upgrading of the core service and the validation of its performance in SAFER has two different priorities. The first is short term improvement in crisis response, with a satellite-based rapid mapping capacity after disastrous events. The second priority is to extend core service components before and after a crisis. It targets the evolution of longer term services by providing thematic products derived from remote sensing data which will be added to the service portfolios.