| | Services overview
GMES is all about products and services – services delivered to users to manage and protect the environment and natural resources, mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure civil security, as well as address global issues.
The monitoring capacity of GMES will be used in numerous ways for the benefit of both Europe and the international community. GMES will provide services for areas such as air quality prediction, flood warning, early detection of drought and desertification, early warning of severe weather, oil-spill detection and drift prediction, sea-water quality, crop analysis, forest monitoring, land-use change, agriculture and food security, and humanitarian aid – to name but a few.
The European Commission is in charge of implementing the services component of GMES. However, both ESA and the European Commission worked together on building the so-called GMES Services Element (GSE), through which pre-operational services and products for users were developed and validated.
GSE fell under ESA's Earth Watch Programmatic element and was approved by ESA Member States and launched in 2001 at the Ministerial Council in Edinburgh, Scotland. By 2005, the services had been consolidated and subsequently consolidated into 10 GSE service portfolios, each responding to user needs in a specific sector of environmental or security policy.
More than 400 users in Europe were gathered through such initial GMES Pre-operational Service Development. Most of the original 10 service portfolios have been transferred to the European Commission and become fast track services for the following five domains:
- Services for the marine environment focus on marine safety and transport, oil spill monitoring, water quality, weather forecasting and the polar environment.
- Services for the land environment focus on water management, agriculture and food security, land-use change, forest monitoring, soil quality, urban planning and natural protection services.
- Atmospheric services focus on air quality ultraviolet radiation forecasting, and climate change studies.
- Emergency response services provide help to mitigate the effects of natural and manmade disasters, flood, forest fire, earthquakes and humanitarian aid.
- Security services provide support for peace-keeping efforts, maritime surveillance and border control.
Last update: 3 April 2009 | |
