ESA TV Exhanges–info on feed of 03 April
Please note the transmission parameters below.
Disaster Management
Natural disaster has always been one of man’s most unpredictable dangers. But satellites in orbit, initially launched for earth observation for scientific research, are becoming valuable allies in our effort to predict natural disasters and facillitate rescue operations. This transmission presents an ESA and CNES initiative for the cooperation of all space agencies in pooling resources to help regions where disaster has struck, including free provision of satellite data for ground-based rescue teams.
The transmission contains examples of the use of ESA and CNES Earth Observation satellites for earthquake monitoring, oil pollution detection, flood monitoring and damage assessment following such natural disasters. It also includes soundbites by ESA and CNES experts; Jerome Bequignon (Applications engineer Earth Observation), Jacques Breton (Special advisor for disaster management),and Pascal Michel (Cartographer).
Script: Disaster Management
An earthquake, storms, oil pollution at sea, floods. Natural disaster has since ever been one of Manís most unpredictable fatalities. But satellites in orbit initially
launched for scientific purposes of Earth observation are now starting to become valuable allies in our effort to predict natural disaster and facilitate rescue operations where it has struck.
ITW JÈrÙme BÈquignon : Well actually the technology we have developed a couple of years ago, at the purpose mainly scientific research, this is true for the optical mission as the Spot mission, but also the radar mission as ERS from ESA. As a matter of fact our scientist working on those data
has just discovered it can be used for the management of natural disaster and since this is a thing witch is more and more important to our society. It’s now increasing and we are working more and more with the people responsible of this activity.
In August 1999, a violent Earthquake struck the region of Izmit, near Istanbul in Turkey.
ITW Jacques Breton : When the catastrophe of Izmit took place in August 1999, we looked at every satellite available to see whether it could provide help in this dramatic situation. We took images with ESAís ERS satellites, and we took images with Spot. It indeed turned out to be possible to contribute elements for damage assessment. Rapidly, data from the ERS-1 and ERS-2 radar
satellites allowed to draw an accurate map of the Earthquake.
ITW J.Breton/CNES : The system of fringes here shows the displacement of the ground along the line of observation. Far away from the fault line, nothing has moved. Every crossing of a fringe corresponds to 28 millimetres of displacement in the direction of observation. On the fault line, the displacement was about one metre, and this is a quite high value. Although this map is not a means for immediate rescue operations, such images show the movement of tectonic plates and give a glimpse of what will happen during the next Earthquake. The optical satellite Spot, on the other hand, rapidly provided the rescue teams with damage evaluation data:
ITW Pascal Michel cartographer Spot Image : What you see here is smoke of an oil refinery that exploded during the Earthquake. The black area covering the whole bay is smoke. On such an image you also see the wind direction, whether or not there is any pollution, and where oil slicks
have been deposited.
December 1999, Christmas holidays also in France. But two violent storms devastate first the north, and shortly later the south of the country. The forthcoming arrival of Lothar and Martin, as these low-pressure-systems had been baptised by the meteorologists, had certainly been recorded by weather satellites such as Meteosat, and a warning been issued the day before. But nobody had expected the two storms to be of such extreme violence.
Optical satellites like Spot allow rapid damage assessment, but they cannot watch through clouds. Radar satellites like ERS-1 and ERS-2 work day and night, rain or shine, and thus prove to be perfectly complementary with optical satellites. This accurate map of the damages to the forest of the Jura Mountains was drawn up less than a month after the catastrophe.
Shortly after the launch of the first radar satellites, scientists discovered how to use the radar interferometry technique to detect oil slicks on the sea surface.
ITW JÈrÙme BÈquignon ESA/ESRIN: This radar image take in half at large of coast of Tunisia give an example of the capabilities of the radar satellite to detect illegal slippage at sea. This black dash here who is left by a ship on its route and this is oil slick, an illegal oil slick. In fact, we can also detect the ships present on the sea when the image whose taken, this white spot circle in
red. We can also see natural oil slick, coming from oil fields from the bottom of the sea.
The seaside areas of Aude, a region in southern France, have frequently been flooded during past years. Images of the optical Spot satellite allowed for the first time in 1997 to draw an accurate map of the flooded areas. Today, satellites come into play much earlier: to help identifying potential risk areas.
Earth observation from Space allows not only accurate modelling of the three-dimensional shape of an area and its water flow patterns, including the land use factors. This matters as forests, buildings and open car parks of big supermarkets do not absorb water the same way. Satellites
minimise the risk to make errors when using different data sets.
Earth observation from space opens new ways to prevent and to manage the consequences of natural hazards. But no satellite can offer round-the-clock surveillance of every point on the globe. This is why ESA and CNES have launched a new initiative:
ITW Jacques Breton/CNES fin: It has now been decided, beginning with CNES and ESA, to work together in crisis areas. The organisations that manage the disaster on the ground where it has struck, will obtain the data rapidly, with high priority and essentially free of charge. This is a major step forward and we believe that the other space agencies will follow soon. There are reasons to believe that the agencies of the USA, Japan, India, Canada, and in Europe also Eumetsat, could rapidly join this initiative. Its objective is to mobilise resources in a coherent way for the benefit of crisis regions, and to rapidly make the data available for the rescue teams on the ground
Satellite parameters
Eutelsat W1, 10 degrees East
Transponder B5, channel 2 (digital, horizontal)
F=11.14375 MHz, SR=5.632 MS/sec, FEC=3/4
MPEG-2 (4:2:0)
MCR: Tel +31 71 565 6322, Fax +31 71 565 6340
PID-codes (Hex): audio 24, video 21, text 0, PCR 21
The next ESA TV Exchanges feed will be transmitted on:
Tuesday 03 April 2001
09:30-09:45 GMT
