On the real capabilities of remote sensing for disaster management - feedback from real cases

One of the applications where remote sensing could be very useful is the management of major disasters. While remote sensing has shown its interest for recovery and inventory tasks after the crisis period, an assessment of its usefulness during the crisis period is needed. Periodic image acquisitions over any point of the Earth surface, with improved resolutions available today seem to fulfill the required specifications of a global monitoring system. Earth Observation satellites in orbit today were not designed for such a purpose. However, several initiatives have been proposed in order to use them in this kind of applications, as for instance, the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, or the CEOS Disaster Management Support Group. In this paper we discuss, based on past experiences, what are the real capabilities of present and near future satellites, which are their drawbacks and how they could be used at best for real cases of crisis management. A list of recommendations with regards to what could be improved at the system level (sensor, acquisition scheduling, ground segment data production) and the techniques for information extraction (image processing, sensor fusion), is given