Earth Observation-based Monitoring of Volcanoes - the contribution of the International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters'

Abstract

The International Charter 'Space and Major Disasters' is an international consortium of space agencies and satellite operators that aims at providing a unified system of space data acquisition and delivery to those affected by natural or man-made disasters. The Charter was founded by the European, the French and the Canadian space agencies (ESA, CNES and CSA) in the year 2000. Following countries subsequently joined the Charter: the USA, India, Argentina, Japan, UK, China, Germany, Korea, Brazil, Russia, Bolivia and the Arab Emirates. Also the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is a Charter member. This article presents the activities of the Charter in the context of Earth Observation-based disaster monitoring of large volcanic eruptions. In the last 18 years the Charter has been activated 34 times due to larger volcanic events, starting with the eruption of Mount Etna, Sicily, Italy in 2001 to the currently on-going eruptions on Papua New Guinea's Kadovar Island and of Philippines' most active volcano, Mount Mayon. Since 2010 the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is member of the Charter and contributes RADAR imagery of the TerraSAR-X mission, RapidEye optical imagery as well as Value Adding, i.e. the extraction of relevant crisis information from satellite data and the transfer of this information into geo-information products, such as maps. Focus of this article is the 16 volcano-related Charter activations where DLR was actively involved.