Plan for global Earth monitoring agreed at Tokyo summit   Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi delivers his speech during the Earth Observation Summit II in Tokyo, Sunday, April 25, 2004. Officials from 47 nations and more than dozen international organizations are meeting here to decide what the Earth Observation 'system of systems' should look like, who will run it and how open it should be. "The international community has to accurately evaluate what is happening around the globe before we can take appropriate steps," he told delegates.   Meteosat-4 artificially-coloured visible channel full-disc Earth image, 6 July 1991. Developed by ESA and since 1995 operated by Eumetsat, Meteosat has been routinely returning Earth imagery from geostationary orbit since 1977. (Credit: ESA/Eumetsat)   José Achache is the new ESA Director of Earth Observation, appointed by the ESA Council of 19/20 December 2001   More than 150 ERS images acquired between 1992 and 2000 were combined by the British Geological Survey to produce this InSAR-based depiction of crustal movement around Hamamatsu-Yaizu on Japan's south coast. It measures the annual average line of sight velocity in millimetres per year of 'permanent scatterer' fixed points. Light blue indicates 1 to 3 mm, green 1 to -1 mm, yellow -1 to -3 mm, orange -3 to -5 mm, and red greater than -5 mm. Applications of the data include geological risk assessment for the insurance industry and exploring links between ground movement and gas pipe failure. Release date: 7 June 2005