Airborne & Spaceborne Rapid Mapping to Support Disaster Management

Kurzfassung

Due to the worldwide increasing occurrence of natural disasters, humanitarian emergency situations and civil threats, there is a growing need for timely and spatially explicit information on rapidly evolving events. Within the DLR-DFD (German Remote Sensing Data Center) the "Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information" (ZKI) provides such crisis information. Its function is the rapid acquisition, processing and analysis of satellite data and the provision of satellite based information products on natural and environmental disasters, humanitarian relief activities and in the context of civil security. The analyses are tailored to meet the specific requirements of national and international political bodies as well as humanitarian relief organizations. ZKI operates in national, European and international contexts, closely networking with German public authorities at national and state levels, nongovernmental organizations (humanitarian relief), satellite operators and space agencies. Accordingly, all DLR activities related to the "International Charter on Space and Major Disasters", in which space agencies cooperate during natural and technological disasters, are coordinated by ZKI. One of the current goals of ZKI is to combine existing DLR technical and scientific resources and expertise for effective and coordinated crisis management. In addition, new remote sensing techniques and methods need to be explored and implemented to the crisis mapping services. Therefore the possibilities of the DLR's new SAR satellite TerraSAR-X are intensely explored and implemented in rapid mapping services. At the moment it is already in use for mapping floods and to detect water bodies. Using TerraSAR-X, flood extents were e.g. mapped for the Brazil and Namibia flood in 2009. A second new DLR capability is airborne real-time mapping with the ARGOS System. It consists of a camera system, an on-board computer array configured as middleware, a high precision NAV-system, a high rate data downlink and a receiving station including an on-ground processing system. Due to the ability to acquire several images per second, also dynamic features like traffic flow can be monitored. The concept and design is especially configured to support crisis management during or shortly after events like e.g. flooding, landslides, large storm damages, infrastructure destruction and distribution of toxic clouds. Recent accidents in Germany like a large landslide have been monitored and are shown.