As part of a visit to DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen Bavarian Minister Ilse Aigner and Dr. Angelika Niebler, a member of the European Parliament, had an opportunity to see the DLR Earth Observation Center (EOC). In the EOC Service Lab they were able to tour the Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) and the Reference Platform for Environmental and Disaster Information Systems.
Professor Stefan Dech, director of the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) and EOC spokesman, described the scientific and technical effort connected with implementing the European earth observation program Copernicus. On behalf of the European Space Agency ESA, DFD operates one of four processing and archiving centers (PAC), with responsibilities for processing, archiving and distributing the instrument data from the Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-3 satellite series. At the same time and in partnerships with scientific and commercial entities, DFD arranges for near-real-time access to Sentinel-1 data and the processing of this data, for example for maritime safety pursuits. Concurrently, DFD was involved in establishing various core services on behalf of the EU, particularly in the areas of information on the atmosphere and civil disasters. Professor Dech described for the guests the great importance of Copernicus for DLR as well as current activities related to establishing a national infrastructure for using Sentinel data in German science and industry.