Ever since 2003 the ZKI offers to users via its web-portal fast, cost-free, and public access to its products. Numerous relief organizations, decision makers and situation rooms have made use of the opportunity to download overall maps, damage maps, and reference material, derived and cartographically pre-processed from satellite- or aerial imagery, and to integrate this information into their aid- or prevention measures. Since 2006 the portal has also granted free access to data from the ZKI-fire-service, offering maps, satellite images and statistics about recent fire events in Europe, derived by automatic data processing from MODIS data, received at DLR.
The new portal will facilitate the access to both data and value added products, and built up the technological base for advanced services. From there registered users will have at the end of 20101 the opportunity to use a web-mapping component, supporting accelerated access to recent satellite images for situation assessment, interactive determination of image sections and scale, and the overlay of available supplementary geo-information layers.