GIS and Earth Observation University

The first international framework on the application of satellite remote sensing in the management of disasters was agreed upon in 2000 under the “International Charter on Space and Major Disasters” (the Charter). The latter is an agreement under which international humanitarian collaboration is established to enable the free use of satellite data to rapidly respond to disasters[1].  The Charter is activated by an authorized user who is a competent authority acting on behalf of a country, which its space agency a member to the Charter. Authorized users are eligible to activate the Charter to manage a disaster within their countries or non-member countries. However, in order to ensure a timely action to manage the disaster, United Nations Office For Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s UNOSAT are authorized on behalf of the United Nations Agencies, and Sentinel Asia’s users, to the activate the Charter upon large-scale disasters. Furthermore, since 2012, the Charter has adopted the international principle of Universal Access and consequently, the Charter was opened to any disaster management authority to become a member[2]. It is of importance to mention that the Charter can be activated only if the conditions are met. First, the disaster must be of a natural or technological origin, second the request must be made within ten days from the occurrence of the disaster. Thus, the compelling sudden event or situation, which may have a significant impact and consequences to the environment, lives and infrastructure is the primary condition of the Charter activation. Nevertheless, the temporal scope of the Charter is limited due to its mandate limitation, which dictates that the support under the Charter lasts from one to four weeks. [3] 

Satellite technologies use under the Charter to mitigate disasters’ risks hinges on efficient and rapid responsive support. Once the request is notified, the Emergency team analyzes the situation to decide upon its eligibility for the action under the Charter. Whereas the request falls under the scope of the Charter, an immediate acquisition plan is made to process the satellite imagery and notify the harvested information from the satellite imagery to the disaster responders. Following the observation planning, users take the adequate satellite command and surveillance to monitor the disaster’s evolution in order to record the data and transmit it to the ground for analysis and quick report response. The members of the Charter may intervene to analyze the images to assist in the risk assessment[4]. The mechanism of disaster response to mitigate the risks that fall under the Charter may be summarized in the following chart.

Credit: UNOOSA.

UNOOSA, UN-Spider, Knowledge Portal, Space Based Information For Disaster Management and Emergency Response: The International Charter Space and Major Disasters, UNOOSA, 2019.

Since the efficiency of the Charter lies in the timely response to disasters, it is critical to identify the time frame to react under the designed process. As per Voigt et al. (2016), the average of overall satellite Emergency response time (from mobilization to the first product from 2000 to 2014) was reduced from 4.5 days in 2006 to 2.5 days in 2014 [5]. The efficiency and rapid response of a space agency’s satellite application to a disastrous situation may be demonstrated through JAXA satellites’ capabilities as an example. The JAXA’s “ALOS-2”, also known as “ALOS-2 Rapid Response” approval to an emergency observation request may be granted within the hour before the “command uplink”. Once the approval is granted, automated data analysis is made within the next two hours, and the provision of the information on the area of the disaster may be provided within five hours. ALOS-2 capabilities also encompass night observation rendering the emergency response more efficient since it is useful to manage the next day report[6]. Nonetheless, it is of importance to mention that the “International Charter on Space and Major Disasters” scope is not only covering environmental disasters as large scale oil spills and massive wildfires. Pandemic diseases management also falls under the scope of the Charter as it will be analyzed next.