For more than 15 years, earth observation data such as satellite, aerial images and other spatial data have been acquired, analyzed and processed in a user-friendly manner at ZKI - especially for the application areas of emergency mapping and civil security. It is our task to develop innovations and new application scenarios through user-oriented further developments and advice - especially for public authorities.
Credit: © DLR/ZKI.
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The ZKI provides data and analyses based on earth observation systems. During the floods in Germany in 2021, data were recorded and analysed by the ZKI using innovative DLR aerial cameras, which processes data in near real-time.
ZKI has been honored by the German Aerospace Society (DGLR) with the award of the "German Space Agency Pin of Honor" for its "outstanding achievements in the use of Earth observation data to support crisis management after natural disasters and in humanitarian aid worldwide." https://www.dlr.de/eoc/de/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-17417/27631_read-74312/
Since 1999, the ZKI-Service did more than 400 activations and trainings in which the output was over 1000 products. https://activations.zki.dlr.de/en/activations/
One of the first topics the ZKI dealt with was about food events. Since then there was more research done. Nowadays there is a system for near-real-time monitoring of flooded areas by using fully automated processes based on Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X-data. https://www.dlr.de/eoc/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-12939/22596_read-51634/
The Satellite data of the FireBird-Mission is used for research at DLR and is provided for external partners. The aim of this mission is detecting and measuring high temperature events out of space, like wild fires. The shown map locates the active fires of different dates of the forest fires in California 2018. https://activations.zki.dlr.de/en/activations/items/ACT139.html
At ZKI satellite data with different spatial resolution is used for extracting crisis information. Especially the combination of very high resolution satellite data and aerial images linked with other geoinformations shown in maps and other products can realize an added value in many applications. https://www.dlr.de/eoc/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-12828/
For many ZKI-Analysis different kinds of data is used and their results is combined to get the highest information content. One example is the volcanic eruption of the most active Vulcan of South America. There TerraSAR-X-data and Rapid-Eye-images were analyzed.https://www.dlr.de/eoc/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-12827/22421_read-51610/
The Center for Satellite based Crisis Information (ZKI) is an institution of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen.
At ZKI Earth Observation data such as satellite or aerial imagery as well as geo data is acquired and analysed in order to generate up-to-date situational awareness information before, during or after a disaster situation or in case of major events. All crisis information is produced according to the ZKI users’ requirements and provided for instance as maps, geo-pdf, web services or text dossiers. Main national and international user groups are political decision makers, situation centers and relief organisations. Many ZKI products are published at the website. In addition, consultancy, technology transfer as well as trainings and exercises are provided. The close interlocking between research, development and service is an enormous strength of the ZKI.
The ZKI cooperates in the national and international context with various partners from research and industry and is closely networked with official partners and non-governmental organisations. It is mainly based on the national framework contract IF-BUND as well as the international services Copernicus EMS and International Charter "Space and Major Disasters".