injured, 31 people lost their lives to the “Space and Major Disasters” (refer to public institutions such as the Aquitaine ing calls from the Headquarters of the French Civil Protection requested a imagery was requested for the entire Breaking News The aftermath of Hurricane Klaus in France or one week in the life of GMES Emergency Response services by Window on GMES staff writers ON SATURDAY JANUARY 24 th , 2009, HURRICANE KLAUS PLOUGHED WEST TO EAST THROUGH SOUTH-WEST FRANCE WITH GUSTS REACHING 198 KM/H AND SUSTAINED WINDS OVER 170 KM/H., ACCOMPANIED BY TORRENTIAL RAIN. THE STORM IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE OVER FRANCE SINCE THE 1999 STORMS. ACCORDING TO ESTIMATES, IN THE MOST AFFECTED AREAS OF LANDES , HOME TO WESTERN EUROPE’S LARGEST FOREST, WINDFALL DAMAGE RANGES UP TO 60% OF THE FOREST COVER, INVOLVING APPROXI- MATELY 40 MILLION CUBIC METRES OF WOOD, WHICH IS EQUIVALENT TO OVER SIX YEARS’ WORTH OF ANNUAL HARVESTING. IN 1999 A PREVIOUS STORM HAD DESTROYED NEARLY 50% OF THE SAME FOREST. Water courses burst their banks in a number of départements . The electrical Region, the departmental Fire and distribution network was badly hit black- Rescue services, the French National ing out households and companies; 1.7 Forestry Office etc.) responsible for for- million homes lost power. On the 26 th est-related emergency response in the at noon, over half a million homes still area. Very early on, specialists started to The trajectory of Hurricane Klaus over France (Credits: Wikipedia). had not regained power. Apart from the get ready to identify the high risk areas, to prepare reference maps, to develop a On Sunday February 24 th at 20:32 UTC, storm, 15 of them in France. A state satellite tasking plan (selecting the most – refer to box p. 39 – according to their of natural disaster was later declared appropriate satellites, among those orbit type and timing, to their sensor the French Civil Protection triggered an for nine départements by the French available within the Charter mechanism types and their applicability to a hurri- activation of the International Charter Government. cane and floods scenario etc.). box below) in order to gain access to At around 5:00am on the 24 th , the hurri- Hurricane Klaus provided GMES the required satellite and image pro - Emergency Response services with a cane made land on the coast of France, cessing resources. Initially, satellite further opportunity to demonstrate south of Bordeaux and the disaster their added value following catastrophic started to unfold. south-western third of France. In the afternoon of January 25 th , anticipating events The red alert was transmitted by Météo As of the very early morning of the the floods announced by Météo France, France in the evening of January 23 rd . 24 th , Météo France was delivering Teams at SERTIT in Strasbourg were updated so-called “Vigilance Maps” second activation of the Charter, limit- placed on stand-by duty after receiv- every two hours. In the afternoon, the ing the area of interest to a zone from Vigilance Maps started forecasting Bordeaux to the Pyrénées mountains, “Vigilance Map” issued by Météo France on the South-West Civil Defence Zone, floods that could follow in the wake of where the most severe floods could be Saturday, January 24 th , at 08:10am (Credits: and from the ATGeRi (a grouping of the hurricane. expected, based on the meteorological Météo France). W INDOW ON GMES W INDOW ON GMES 32 33
Major Disasters”. project) of an automated tool to • • Although this result is already quite • Structuring of a network of European • Ensuring the delivery to decision Development (based on precursory rived from a satellite acquisition of followed by more acquisitions on the • Breaking News forecasts and the hydrological models. SERTIT After a long week-end, the SERTIT team was asked to perform value add- SERTIT is a remote sensing and im- ing mapping tasks on the afternoon age processing service provider. It of January 26 th , and delivered the first was created in 1987 and is hosted crisis products to the Civil Protection by the Strasbourg University. in the evening – flooded areas near SERTIT is specialised in Emergency Montauban, Toulouse region – de- Response remote sensing applica- tions. It is financially supported by January 24 th .The next satellite acquisi - the European Space Agency (ESA) tions took place in the afternoon of the within the RISK-EOS GMES Service 26 th (Japan’s ALOS PALSAR satellite) Element, and has been contract- ed by the French Space Agency 27 th (ESA’s ENVISAT satellite ) and on (CNES) to produce added value the 30 th (SPOT 4). This enabled SERTIT EO-derived products (reference to deliver a series of crisis products mapping and rapid crisis map- highlighting the flooded areas in the ping) within the framework of the basins of the rivers Adour, Dordogne, International Charter “Space and Garonne, Isle and Charente (refer to im- age below). Road flooded in the aftermath of hurricane Klaus, in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in the region of Dax, in the south-west of France (Credits: Alain Duvignau). Improvement of emergency ser - remarkable, it is still based on a best vice mobilisation and activation efforts principle, as stipulated in the procedures; Charter. Specialists worked long hours over a week-end and at night. The work conducted in the BOSS4GMES European Space Agency, its Japanese counterpart, French Space Agency ease and speed satellite tasking CNES and Spot Image mobilised their (automatic selection of the satellite satellite resources, while CNES was act- best suited for the job, and an auto - ing as coordinator. It is expected that matic imagery ordering system) and the future GMES Emergency Response increase its efficiency; service will contribute to a decreased response time. service providers capable of main- taining an operational capability 24 The main areas where progress is to be hours a day, seven days a week all achieved in the future, and in particular year around, in order to cope with in the framework of the SAFER project emergencies of all types (floods, (refer to news item on page 87), are as hurricanes, earthquakes, land - follows: slides, wildfires, tsunamis, volcanic Production, when needed and in an - eruptions, humanitarian crises etc.) ticipation of possible emergencies, anywhere in Europe or in the world; of reference maps for disaster-prone Crisis map indicating (in light blue) the areas potentially flooded in the Adour River basin, near Dax, areas in Europe and around the makers and field teams of derived produced by combining a Landsat image from July 2001 with data captured by ESA’s ENVISAT satellite world; products adapted to their needs. on January 27 th , 2009 (Credits: ESA and USGS for the imagery, SERTIT for the processing). W INDOW ON GMES W INDOW ON GMES 34 35
ellites equipped with radar payloads) To update plans for the next fire • To devise relief measures for affected • • with the catastrophic consequences of Breaking News Klaus, in particular for the forests of the Landes. Amongst the work still to be performed there was still the contribution from Earth Observation to the evaluation of the damage to the forests. This evalua- tion is important for several reasons: To set priorities for on-site interven - tions (clean-up, hazards to forestry personnel or to the public, clogged Reference map: woodland mapping before the ditches increasing the flood risk crossing of Klaus over the Parc Naturel Regional etc.); des Landes de Gascogne, Aquitaine Region, produced from SPOT 5 reference data (Credits: CNES/Spot Image and USGS for the imagery, forest owners; 60% of the Landes pine forest was allegedly destroyed by Hurricane Klaus (Credits: Hélène Surget). SERTIT for processing). season and to cope with potential sanitary risks. The availability of a greater number of satellites possessing the appropriate Traditional evaluation methods rely on sensors, several of them in constella- the use of cameras mounted on aero- tions, such as the Sentinel family of planes or helicopters. These airborne satellites being developed as part of assets are neither available, nor useable the Space Component of GMES, and around the clock, they are quite ex - also so-called “contributing missions” pensive to operate and maintain, they whose operators are not Parties to the Charter agreement (such as the COSMO-SkyMed or TerraSAR-X sat- will also contribute to the improved performance of Emergency Response services. This will result in the capacity to deliver reference maps in six hours or less after an activation of the service and crisis maps 24 hours thereafter, while the re- sponse time was of 48 hours in the case of Hurricane Klaus. But crisis maps were not the end of the story, as far as GMES products related to Klaus are concerned… After the end of the crisis, the Charter moved on to By comparing archive SPOT 5 imagery from June other emergencies (floods in Morocco, 6 th , 2006, to an image acquired on January 29 th , wildfires in Australia etc.) but there 2009, Spot Image was able to produce this ba- Preliminary test sample of an estimate of damage to the forest cover around the town of Belin-Beliet sic mapping of the most affected wooded areas (south-west of Bordeaux). Areas where anomalies in the forest cover have been detected by compari- was still a lot to do in France to cope (in blue) south of Arcachon (Credits: CNES/Spot son with pre-storm imagery are featured in red (Credits: CNES/Spot Image and ESA for the imagery, Image). SERTIT for processing). W INDOW ON GMES W INDOW ON GMES 36 37
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