GMES
Services
Space
systems
In-situ
systems
Data Integration &
Information Management
GMES
Services
Space
systems
In-situ
systems
Data Integration &
Information Management
(INSPIRE/ESDI)
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security
INSPIRE
Infrastructure for Spatial
Information in Europe
GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and
Security) is a European initiative for the
implementation of information services
dealing with environment and security.
GMES is based on observation data received
from Earth Observation satellites and ground
based information. These data will be
coordinated, analysed and prepared for end-
users.
Through GMES the state of our environment and its short,
medium and long-term evolution will be monitored to
support policy decisions or investments.
GMES is a set of services for European citizens helping to
improve their quality of life regarding environment and
security.
GMES is built up gradually: it starts with a pilot phase
which targets the availability of a first set of operational
GMES services by 2008 followed by the development of
an extended range of services which meet user
requirements.
2. How did it start?
Years of research in the fields of science and technology
associated with observation and understanding of the
processes and phenomena of the terrestrial environment
led in 1998 to the idea to launch GMES.
By a combination of measurements at terrestrial level and
from space, it rapidly became clear that new operational
services could be offered in fields such as
oceanography, precise mapping of land use, rapid
mapping at times of emergency for the civil
protection field or air quality monitoring.
The progressive implementation of GMES is made possible
by the activities and investments of European Union and
ESA Member States. These and other public and private
contributions are jointly supported by the European
Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency
(ESA).
3. To whom is it addressesd?
GMES is the European solution to respond to the needs of
citizens in Europe to access reliable information on the status
of their environment.
GMES will mainly support decision-making by both
institutional and private actors. Decisions could concern
either new regulations to preserve our environment or urgent
measures in case of a natural or man–made catastrophes
(i.e. floods, forest fires, water pollution).
But to take decisions, it is necessary to anticipate, intervene
and control. (předcházet, zasahovat, řídit)
GMES will integrate these functions by assembling the
information acquired in a reliable, valid and compatible
manner and make them available for user friendly
exploitation. The services will be used by environmental
agencies, local, regional and national authorities, civil
protection organisations, etc.
The new observation techniques and analysis of data will
permit these actors to better anticipate potential threats, to
intervene timely and to increase the efficiency of the
intervention.
By observing the main Earth sub-systems (land, air, seas)
a number of information services can be developed and
used for the definition and monitoring of EU policies in the
field of environment and security.
Moreover, by building on these services and adding value
to them (possibly using other data and observations),
more targeted and customised (tailored) services can be
developed addressing for instance health issues,
productivity increases and other aspects.
Some examples of services are:
Oil spill/discharge detection & monitoring;
Land cover/land use for policy making and services
to farmers;
Support to civil protection – rapid mapping;
Environment and health services – ozone
monitoring and UV exposure.
WHAT SERVICES WILL BE PROVIDED?
The services provided by GMES can be classified in three
major categories:
Mapping, including topography or road maps but also
land-use and harvest, forestry monitoring, mineral and
water resources that do contribute to short and long-term
management of territories and natural resources. This
service generally requires exhaustive coverage of the
Earth surface, archiving and periodic updating of data.
Support for emergency management in case of natural
hazards and particularly civil protection institutions
responsible for the security of people and property. This
service concentrates on the provision of the latest
possible data before intervening.
Forecasting is applied for marine zones, air quality or
crop yields. This service systematically provides data on
extended areas permitting the prediction of short,
medium or long-term events, including their modelling
and evolution.
The widespread and regular availability of technical data
within GMES will allow a more efficient use of the
infrastructures and human resources. It will help the
creation of new models for security and risk
management, as well as better management of land and
resources.
GMES is the European participation in the worldwide
monitoring and management of our planet Earth and the
European contribution to the Group on Earth Observation
(GEO). The global community acts together for a synergy of
all techniques of observation, detection and analysis.
At the World Summit on Earth Observation in Washington in
July 2003, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was
established, with the goal of addressing the information
requirement for the environment on a global scale. This
work was completed in Brussels in February 2005 by the
adoption of a 10 year implementation plan of an integrated
Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
The GEOSS is an ambitious programme of information for
ecological security and durable development intended for
mankind. It principally foresees the monitoring and
understanding of nature, the extent of disasters due to
human activities, the impact of global warming,
desertification, erosion and deforestation.
GMES will be the main European contribution to GEOSS.
The Forum GMES 2008 held in Lille on 16-17 September
2008 marked the launch of the first GMES services in preoperational
mode:
Marine Environmental Services
Atmospheric Environmental Services
Land Environmental Services
Support to Emergencies and Humanitarian Aid
Support to security -related activities
The development of these services is supported by
implementation groups put in place in the context of the
Action Plan 2004 - 2008.
Marine Environmental Services
MyOcean is a project granted by the European
Commission within the 7th Framework Programme, with
the objective to define and to set up a concerted and
integrated pan-European capacity for Ocean Monitoring
and Forecasting.
The areas of benefit are:
Maritime Security
Oil Spill combat
Marine Resources management
Climate Change
Seasonal Forecast
Coastal Activities
Ice Survey
Water Quality and Pollution.
MyOcean is the last step toward the GMES Marine Core
Service after many Europe founded programmes such as
POLARVIEW, ECOOP, MARCOAST, MERSEA, ...
Atmospheric Environmental Services
The prototype atmospheric services of GMES are currently
provided by two cooperating consortia that operate the
PROMOTE GMES Service Element project funded by the
European Space Agency, and the GEMS project funded by
the European Commission as part of the 6th Framework
Programme for Research, Technical Development and
Demonstration.
The focus of PROMOTE is the delivery of services to
support informed decisions on issues related to
stratospheric ozone depletion, surface UV exposure, air
quality and climate change. Services are based both on
products derived directly from satellite data and on
products from established data assimilation and modelling
systems. Services can be accessed from PROMOTE
website.
The focus of GEMS is to develop new integrated systems for
monitoring the global distributions of atmospheric
constituents important for climate, and for monitoring and
forecasting constituents affecting air quality and surface
solar radiation, with a focus on Europe. Trial versions of
these systems are currently being operated, and the
products can be accessed from GEMS website.
From mid-2009, the core services of the atmospheric
component of GMES will be delivered by a new consortium
comprising most of the partners of the GEMS project and
core production partners from PROMOTE,
following the conclusion of a grant from the European
Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. These
services will continue and rationalize the provision of the
main sets of data products provided currently by
PROMOTE and GEMS. It is also expected that the
Framework Programme will support development of a set
of downstream services that provide user-oriented
information based on the core-service data products.
Land Environmental Services
Land Environmental Services operationally provide sound,
reliable and affordable land related geo-information
products on the regional, European and global scale.
Their aim is to effectively support public authorities of the
European Commission and the EU Member States in the
implementation of the new European Environmental
Directives as well as international treaties towards
adaptation to Climate Change.
By the combined analysis of data received from Earth
Observation satellites and ground based measuring
networks theses services provide wide-area and crossboarder
harmonized geo-information products for a
multitude of thematic areas,
like land use / land cover change, soil sealing, water quality
and availability, spatial planning, forest management,
carbon storage and global food security. Selected
examples of products from various European regions can
be viewed and tested on the Land Information Services
portal.
Fast Track Service / CORINE Land Cover 2006
Based on previous consolidation results, the European
Environment Agency (EEA) has added the first PanEuropean
High-Resolution Land Cover Data to its data
service: a Sealing Layer and a Forest Layer covering
entire Europe. In addition, the CORINE Land Cover
database, existing since the 1990s, was updated for the
third time for the year 2006.
The ambition is to add further high-resolution layers
during the coming years during the implementation of the
Land Information Core Services
Urban Atlas
Quality of Life in Europe’s cities is being recorded by the
Urban Audit initiative of DG Regional Cohesion and DG
Environment. The Urban Atlas Core Service Element is to
add a spatial dimension, e.g. to show the accessibility to
green urban areas or to enable the localization of abstract
statistical parameters (e.g. population density).
Forest Monitoring
Forest Monitoring Services provide innovative, timely, costeffective
and quality-assured forest information to support
reporting on national and international policies such as the
UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
and the Kyoto Protocol, the UN Convention on Biological
Diversity (UNCBD), the Ministerial Conference on the
Protection of Forests in Europe (MCPFE) and processes
related to Streamlining European Biodiversity Indicators by
2010 (SEBI 2010). Making use of Earth Observation
methodologies allows retrieving spatially explicit
information on the state and development of forests from
continental to regional scale in a cost-efficient way and at
proven high quality.
Water Quality
Water Quality Services address the Water Framework
Directive (WFD) obligating the EU Member States to
manage, monitor and report the status of the water
resources on river basin scale. The services focus on
identification and management of nutrient and pesticide
inputs into the water cycle resulting from diffuse and point
sources.
Spatial Development
The Spatial Development Service provides spatially
referenced and consistent geo-information for monitoring of
urban structure, urban growth and soil sealing in support of
reporting obligations. Products describe the pressure, state
and impact of urban land take for integrated spatial
planning.
Environmental Resource Management in Africa
The Service for Environmental Resource Management in
Africa ensures permanent access to high quality preprocessed
data for all African countries by using advanced
satellite telecommunication infrastructures. Products of the
service comprise advanced environmental parameters (in
particular related to vegetation conditions), processed
according to standard procedures, as well as maps such
as land cover maps, forest maps, etc.
Support to Emergencies and Humanitarian Aid
Services
Support to Emergencies and Humanitarian Aid services
target three main application domains:
Civil Protection: National Civil Protection Services of
Europe, DG ENV (European CP Unit), and more globally
all risk management actors in Europe at different
territorial scales
Humanitarian Aid: DG RELEX, DG ECHO, NGOs
Security crises: European Council, Member States
It addresses all types of disasters: natural disasters
(floods, fires, landslides, storms, earthquakes, etc.),
technological accidents, humanitarian crises (for instance
after a severe drought period), civilian-military crises.
Pre-operational services for Crisis management support
have been developed by the GMES Service Element for
Humanitarian Relief - RESPOND and the GMES Service
Element for Civil Protection – RISK-EOS
Data Portal
The Connecte@sy portal offers access to products
delivered by the PREVIEW and RISK-EOS projects. The
goal of this common portal is to provide a unified access
to the products in order to facilitate the information
exchange and sharing between the service providers and
the risk user community.
In complementary with the existing delivery means held
by the service provider for specific users, the
Connecte@sy portal proposes the following
functionalities at a global level:
The consultation of the available products,
The on-line visualisation and combination of data,
The possibility to retrieve and visualise data in Google
Earth.
Windstorm Services
Alerts of strong winds over Europe for 1-2 and 3-5 days
ahead using a traffic light warning system, and with the
facility to access more forecast detail.
Fire Services
Fire Meteo Indices: The European Forest Fire Information
System (EFFIS) supports the services in charge of the
protection of forests against fires in the EU countries and
provides the European Commission services and the
European Parliament with updated and reliable information
on wildland fires in Europe.
Automatic Burn Scar Mapping: Daily provision of
burnt area maps based on an Automatic and
Autonomous system. The Automatic Burn Scar
Mapping service provides during the summer fire
season daily products regarding burn scars mapping at
medium-resolution for burnt areas larger than 48ha.
Burn Scar Mapping: The Burn Scar Mapping service
package is dedicated to provide, seasonally, after the
summer and winter fire seasons, information products
regarding burnt scar mapping at high-resolution (60 m
accuracy).
Regional Fire Monitoring: Detection and Monitoring
of active fires near real-time by MSG/SEVIRI data
(updated every 15 minutes)
Floods services
Medium-range plain flood forecasting: The benefit of
the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) is two-fold.
First, EFAS should provide the European Commission
with useful information for the preparation and
management of aid during a flood crisis.
Second, National Water Authorities should benefit from
additional medium-range flood information that might
contribute to increased preparedness in an upcoming
flood event. EFAS is aimed at complementing national
flood forecasting systems, not to replace them. The
European Flood Alert System (EFAS) activity is at present
in a development and testing phase at the European
Commission Joint Research Centre.
Flood Information System (floodserver):
The use of flood management and information systems
shows the benefits of readily available information and
the need for effective and efficient cooperation between
the users.
The floodserver supplies detailed information on the
extent, impact and damage potential of past flood events.
It is designed to provide extensive flood risk information
for whole Europe quickly, reliable and easily accessible
for everyone using detailed maps and information about
past and potential future flood events.
At present flood relevant information about the
rivers Rhine, Elbe and Lower Weser is already
available. For the river Severn a TerraSAR-X
based flood extent map has recently been
implemented into the floodserver.
Northern Flood: Probability forecasts for exceeding the
High Flood, i.e. flood with a return period 2-10 years.
Flood Risk Analysis: Delivery of information products to
support flood scenarii elaboration and flood prevention
plans
Flash Flood Early Warning: Hourly mapping of
excessive runoff and overflow risks on basin prone to
flash floods