The Crisis Management service targeted in the BOSS4GMES project targets three main application domains:

• Civil Protection: National Civil Protection Services of Europe, DG ENV (European CP Unit), and more globally all risk management actors in Europe at different territorial scales
• Humanitarian Aid: DG RELEX, DG ECHO, NGOs
• Security crises: European Council, Member States

It addresses all types of disasters: natural disasters (floods, fires, landslides, storms, earthquakes, etc.), technological accidents, humanitarian crises (for instance after a severe drought period), civilian-military crises. The envisaged vision for the service delivery organisation to be set-up is structured as follows:

• A “Core Rapid Delivery Mapping” service, dedicated to immediate response delivery (3-72 hours) for all application domains.
• Complementary and downstream support services for Humanitarian Aid, aiming to provide additional information support throughout crisis development.
• Link to the complementary and downstream support services for Civil Protection, aiming to exploit the information generated during crisis for prevention and preparedness to future crises.

The management of disasters and crises is structured into four main phases:

1. Preparedness (early warning / anticipation)
2. Crisis / Disaster Response
3. Post-crisis relief, rehabilitation and recovery
4. Post-crisis reconstruction and mitigation

Operational services for Crisis management support have been developed by the GMES Service Element for Humanitarian Relief - Respond And the GMES Service Element for Civil Protection – RISK-EOS Additionally further work in the Civil protection domain is being carried out under the 6th Framework Programme Preview

EO data may be supplied following crisis events via the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” it is limited to data provision, for natural and industrial disasters only.

To achieve the performance expected by the users these services must further evolve, particularly in the regions of:

• end-to-end delivery time
• increasing the utilisation potential of this service
• making the link to risks preparedness
• preparing for the arrival of new European sensors

The fast track service within BOSS4GMES aims to define and validate an improved “Crisis Management” service fully meeting users expectations and requirements. It will achieve this by:

• Defining an organisational scheme better federating the present service capacities and actors, in particular the users and service provider community dealing with civilian-military crises
• Proposing an economic model for the proposed service, to ensure its sustainability beyond the time frame of the GSE programme
• Federating and attracting the users communities by appropriate communication

Respond, RISK-EOS, and Preview focus mainly on service delivery. BOSS4GMES offers an opportunity to focus on the future evolution of these services. This will focus on the end-to-end information delivery lead time, ease of information access by the users, and link with risks prevention.

BOSS4GMES will examine and build upon:

• The existing service chains (RISK-EOS, RESPOND)
• Existing capacity in the field of hydro-meteorological forecasting, to be linked with the crisis services
• Existing EO data processing tools which could be used to optimise the processing chains
• Existing toolboxes and on-going developments for multi-satellite data access
• Recent technology developments and tools for data distribution

Below are some sample data from our data suppliers