Bavaria’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology has instituted a working group entitled “GMES bavAIRia”. It was stimulated by the joint European Commission and European Space Agency program GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), in which institutes of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen are also major participants. GMES is the central initiative for a global environmental and security monitoring program from space. It will utilize earth observation satellites already in orbit as well as ones yet to be launched, for example, the radar satellite TerraSAR-X, developed with the participation of DLR. GMES will intensify the assessment of already existing data, in order to provide access to innovative, economical and user-focused information which will make it easier for decision makers to identify potential crises early and initiate meaningful countermeasures.
During the press conference on October 5 in the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology, Minister Erwin Huber emphasized Bavaria’s competence to build up space-based monitoring capabilities, and also Bavaria’s international importance in aviation and aerospace. Bavaria has superb preconditions for influencing the design of GMES, he said. Positive economic effects can be expected for Bavaria as well. Bavaria was ready to be a partner at regional, national and European levels for the next steps in the development of GMES. Under the moderation of Dr. Martin Haunschild, Dr. Volker Liebig—Director of Earth Observation at the European Space Agency ESA—also gave his support to Bavaria’s GMES initiative. The speaker of the “GMES bavAIRia” initiative, Thomas Dittler, head of IABG—summarized the goals of the initiative. Prof. Stefan Dech, director of DLR’s German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) in Oberpfaffenhofen gave a presentation on “Bavarian Contributions to GMES.” In addition, experts reported about the work accomplished to date in Bavaria in relation to GMES.