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Applications and Projects: Environment and Civil Security

Establishing linked services for global environmental monitoring, developing early warning systems and disaster management gains increasing importance against a background of climate change. EOC participates in numerous relevant EU and ESA projects, cooperates with national and international organizations such as the UN Spider office and Germany’s disaster aid organization THW, and operates the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information ZKI.

Projects of the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP6)

CLIMB

According to current climate projections, Mediterranean countries are at high risk for an even pronounced susceptibility to changes in the hydrological budget and extremes. The strategy of CLIMB - Climate Induced Changes on the Hydrology of Mediterranean Basins - is aiming to employ and integrate advanced field monitoring techniques, remote sensing analyses and retrievals, climate models auditing and integrated hydrologic modeling and socioeconomic factor assessment in a new conceptual framework to significantly reduce existing uncertainties in climate change impact analysis.

DITAC

The EU FP7 project „Disaster Training Curriculum – DITAC“ aims to develop a holistic and highly structured curriculum for first responders and strategic crisis managers dealing with national and international disasters. We will develop a standardized, comprehensive and efficient EU-wide approach to crises and disasters to feature the added value by EU coordinated actions in the field of crisis response. The Curriculum will improve the preparedness and availability of trained personnel by providing a common language, common objectives and common tools leading to better results in the protection and assistance of people confronted with large-scale crises.

	GIONET GIONET (GMES Initial Operations - Network for Earth Observation Research Training) will create a European Centre of Excellence in the training of early stage researchers in the Earth Observation to provide skilled personnel for the emerging GMES land monitoring services during the GMES Initial Operations period (2011-2013) and beyond.
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G-NEXT

The Copernicus (former GMES) FP 7 project G-NEXT builds on the work performed in precursor GMES security and emergency projects like G-MOSAIC, LIMES and SAFER. It aims at providing geospatial products for supporting users of the GMES Security domain in managing situations of complex crises caused by man-made or natural disasters. Such support to the crisis management ranges from pre-crisis or prevention (contingency plans, reference mapping), to the phase soon after the event (event mapping, crisis area mapping, critical assets), and finally to the post event phase (damage assessment and monitoring mode) in general.

G-SEXTANT

G-SEXTANT ist ein FP 7-Projekt im Rahmen von Copernicus (ehemals GMES) mit dem Ziel ein Portfolio an Erdbeobachtungsprodukten und -services zu entwickeln, um in erster Linie den geo-räumlichen Informationsbedarf des Europäischen Auswärtigen Dienstes zu decken. Dabei wird auf die Entwicklung von möglichen prä-operationellen Diensten im Rahmen definierter Szenarien (z.B. Humanitäre Hilfe, natürliche Ressourcen in Konfliktregionen), die Anpassung von Produkten an die Nutzeranforderungen und die Entwicklung eines standardisierten Produkt Portfolios fokussiert.

SENSUM

As millions of people are exposed to significant natural hazards every year, the GMES/Copernicus FP 7 project “SENSUM – Framework to integrate Space-based and in-situ sENSing for dynamic vUlnerability and recovery Monitoring” responds to the urgent need to monitor and map time-dependent hazard and vulnerability. By the combination of space-based and in-situ data collection for test sites in and outside Europe, the project aims to develop a comprehensive approach and methodology for dynamic, multi-resolution monitoring of pre-disaster vulnerability and post-disaster recovery planning and monitoring. Under the lead management of GFZ and a consortium of eight prominent international scientific institutions including the DLR, the project is meant to set a new standard for future mapping of vulnerabilities.

National Projects and GMES-Downstream-Services

PROTECTS

In 2005, the establishment of core elements of a tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean with emphasis on Indonesia started within the framework of the GITEWS (German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System) project. In this project, an early warning system was designed under the lead management of GFZ and a consortium of German research institutions (AWI, DLR, GVW, GEOMAR, KDM, BGR, UNU-EHS and GIZ). The system was handed over to Indonesia on 29 March, 2011. The structure of the system follows a so-called end-to-end approach, considering the whole warning chain from the detection of a natural disaster via decision support and warning dissemination, up to training and education of the local population as well as disaster preparedness.

SASSCAL

SASSCAL (Southern Africa Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land-use) is a joint initiative of Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Germany, responding to the challenges of global change and is foreseen as the regional driver for innovation and knowledge exchange to enhance adaptive land use and sustainable economic development in Southern Africa under global change conditions.

WASCAL

With climate change being one of the most severe challenges to rural Africa in the 21st century, West Africa is facing an urgent need to develop effective adaptation and mitigation measures.
WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) is a large-scale research-focused program designed to help tackle this challenge and thereby enhance the resilience of human and environmental systems to climate change and increased variability. It does so by strengthening the research infrastructure and capacity in West Africa related to climate change and by pooling the expertise of ten West African countries and Germany.

The Polycentricity of German Metropolitan Areas - developing and testing a remote-sensing-based procedure to measure morphologic polycentricity

May 16, 2013
The evolution of polycentric metropolitan areas is one of the most incisive structural changes of the past 30 years. The current decentralized structure of metropolitan areas in western industrialized countries is described as a complex, network of centres and subcentres organized according to a functional division of labour. To what extent this transformation process from monocentric to polycentric settlement structures in German metropolitan regions has progressed has only begun to be systematically researched.

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Vabene

14 February 2012
The goal of DLR transport research is to devise approaches for convincing solutions to relevant traffic problems. In order to achieve efficient and focused traffic management for large public events and major catastrophes, a reliable system is to be developed to optimize joint decision-making by public authorities, organizations with security responsibilities, and public transport agencies. In the VABENE project, up-to-date traffic information and forecasts will be used for situation assessment, and decision options will be presented with the help of an integrated management and visualization tool. The required data will be obtained in real time through aerial traffic and infrastructure monitoring with the help of optical and radar instruments.