The toll continues to rise after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. To help rescue, space agencies from 17 countries, including France, have started providing satellite images.
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The international charter “Space and major disasters” was activated on Monday February 6 following the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria. In the aftermath, the best-placed satellites of these eleven space agencies were reprogrammed so that their flight plan could integrate the earthquake zone and provide voluntary images of the sectors affected over an area of 10,000 km². For France, the National Center for Space Studies (CNES) mobilized its Spot and Pléiades satellites. With these shots taken from space, the objective is to save time, because these images make it possible to identify all the disaster areas with a speed that cannot be achieved by terrestrial means.
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Two types of images are provided to help the emergency services: on the one hand, there are snapshots, taken by high-performance optical satellites, which allow us to see the damage to the buildings, with an accuracy of 50 cm, explained Philippe Baptiste, the president of CNES, this is used to map the affected areas, and to help the relief workers find access paths in the rubble.
All types of disasters are observed
This also makes it possible to locate from space the places where populations gather, in order to quickly deploy humanitarian aid to the right place. In the absence of means of telecommunication, it is very precious. In addition, there are also radar observations, which provide snapshots, including at night, or through cloud cover.
These satellite images are transmitted to the countries which have requested the activation of the “Space and disaster” system. In this case, Turkey and the United Nations for Syria. This observation system for humanitarian purposes has existed for more than 20 years. It involves a total of 17 space agencies and more than 200 satellites and has already been triggered nearly 800 times around the world. Beyond earthquakes, three-quarters of these activations are due to extreme meteorological phenomena: storms, hurricanes, fires linked to drought and especially floods which alone represent half of the cases of mobilization of these satellites.
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