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The images are still vivid – waves as tall as houses striking the eastern coast of Japan on 11 March 2011, sweeping away
all before them – people, roads, households, factories… The tsunami was triggered by an earthquake with a magnitude
of 9 on the Richter scale – the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan. As it spread inland, it damaged and even
destroyed several nuclear power stations. The earthquake occurred at 06:46 CET (14:46 Japan time). At 06:55, DLR staff
at the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (Zentrum für satellitengestützte Kriseninformation; ZKI) in
Oberpfaffenhofen received an automatic alert via email and SMS from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in
Potsdam. Just 40 minutes after the first tremor, the Japanese government activated the Charter, and already at 09:00
German time, the first situational briefing was being held at the ZKI. Even at this early stage, it was clear that this was
an extraordinary situation.
From April to October 2013, DLR will be chairing the International
Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’
By Elisabeth Mittelbach
Satellite images
for emergencies
Behind the glass, at the DLR Center for Satellite
Based Crisis Information in Oberpfaffenhofen,
scientists prepare the latest maps from satellite
images to assist relief services in the event of
natural or man-made disasters.
What is the Charter?
Under the International Charter ‘Space and Major
Disasters’, 15 space agencies across the world offer quick
and bureaucracy-free assistance in the event of natural
catastrophes and major technical disasters. If the Charter
is activated as a result of an earthquake, a major flood
or devastating wildfires, for example, the members will
provide images from Earth observation satellites as quickly
as possible. This provides emergency, rescue and relief
organisations with information about the extent of the
damage, and offers guidance for coordinating the relief
efforts on the ground. DLR has been an official member
of the Charter since October 2010 and will hold the chair
for the first time from April to October 2013.
Tobias Schneiderhan from the ZKI remembers the tsunami
effort as if it were yesterday. “We programmed the German
TerraSAR-X radar satellite immediately after the Charter was
activated. The first damage assessments were carried out on the
basis of the data acquired.”
The geographer, who is responsible for DLR technical and
operational activities under the Charter in Oberpfaffenhofen,
occasionally works as an Emergency on-Call Officer (ECO) or
Project Manager (PM) at the ZKI, the centre specialising in fast-
response crisis information and which is part of DLR’s German
Remote Sensing Data Center. Two open-plan offices with com-
puters, monitors and a large display wall of the ZKI control cen-
tre can be seen through its glass façade. Its design is similar to
that of a satellite control room. “Images acquired with the Ger-
man TerraSAR-X and RapidEye satellites showed the full extent
of the catastrophe in Japan,” comments Stefan Voigt, who has
worked at the German Remote Sensing Data Center since 2000
and has collaborated in the conceptual and operational develop-
ment of satellite-based disaster relief support at DLR. “When
the Charter is triggered following a disaster, our satellites are
programmed or reprogrammed on the spot and pointed at the
affected area,” the DLR scientist explains. The Data Manager at
the ZKI is responsible for sending the commands to the satellites
from the DLR ground station in Weilheim, Upper Bavaria.
The satellite images are then received at the DLR ground
station at Neustrelitz, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and for-
warded to the ZKI. From there, they are sent to the relevant ac-
tive Project Manager, who ensures that the images are assessed
and processed into detailed thematic maps – as many relief
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