“Natural and man-made phenomena — such as forest fires, floods or oil slicks — can be monitored particularly effectively from space. Earth observation satellites provide the necessary data that help us understand global changes and actually make it possible to react in time to such changes”, State Secretary for Research Eduard Mainoni said on Tuesday evening in Graz.
The capital of the Austrian Bundesland Styria will be the centre of European space policy for three days. The conference “A Market for GMES in Europe and its regions - the Graz Dialogue” is to be the launch pad for the European user-oriented space project GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security). Around 200 participants from all over Europe are discussing the potential and the applications of GMES in the Karl-Franzen University in Graz. They will also consider ways of increasing the involvement of the regions in the initiative, as well as the time frame, funding and the question of governance.
“The idea behind GMES is very simple: we observe from space changes on the Earth’s surface. This monitoring activity makes it possible to react in appropriate fashion and above all in good time to natural disasters. The applications are very varied – the GMES system can be used both in environmental protection and in security matters", Mainoni explained.
GMES will be the second flagship European space project alongside Galileo. The space segment costs around 2.3 billion euro. A small proportion of the funding for the project will come from the EU’s 7th research framework programme. The remaining costs will be covered by ESA from the optional programmes. "We expect the first Europe-wide GMES services to come on stream as early as 2008. This will be done with the satellite systems that already exist. ESA’s first operational GMES satellites are then scheduled to be placed in orbit in 2012, send data back to Earth and thus guarantee the operational use of GMES services. After all, the EU and ESA countries are all fully behind the project", Mainoni said in confident mood at the beginning of the conference.
The exhibition "Planet Earth – Reconnaissance from Space" is being organised to coincide with the conference and can be visited up to and including 11 June 2006 in the Landesmuseum Joanneum. Details of this exhibition are available at http://www.planet-erde.at.
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