Cash crisis weakens disaster alert system

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 30/06/05

Europe's ability to assist in humanitarian emergencies and crisis management operations is being hampered by weaknesses in the use of satellite intelligence.

The head of the EU's Satellite Centre, which is based in Torrejón, Spain, has warned that a lack of funding for satellite intelligence has resulted in a shortage of image analysts whose work is essential to monitoring crises and planning evacuations in the event of natural or man-made disasters.

Frank Asbek, director of the centre, said that the EU would need 50-60 image analysts in 5-10 years, whereas of his current staff, only 20 were image analysts.

"The big problem is that we have holes appearing," Asbek told European Voice, "we can only work sequentially, we are reorganising our workload on an almost daily basis.

"During the [Indian Ocean] tsunami we had to allocate all our image analysts to that, so we had to delay evacuation preparations in other areas."

Satellite imagery was used following the tsunami to judge the extent of flooding and to identify affected areas.

The Satellite Centre, which was taken over by the EU in 2002, used to be part of the Western European Union. It has played an important role in EU military interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also provides information on arms control and environmental monitoring.

But it pales in size when compared to other national agencies. Before it was integrated into other agencies, the US's National Photographic Interpretation Centre had a staff of 1,200 image interpreters and archivists. The UK's Defence Geospatial Intelligence, which has a wider range of tasks, has a staff of 1,450.

The centre's board of directors, chaired by foreign policy chief Javier Solana, with one representative from each state and the Commission, is to meet in July to discuss a proposed budget. Currently the centre's running costs are €10 million each year.

A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to be published next week will argue that governments should make more effective use of satellite technology.

Satellite imagery is increasingly being used to monitor and predict environmental threats, such as hurricaines and floods.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has accused member states of a lack of ambition over sharing geospatial data on the environment, much of which is gathered by satellite. Dimas said an agreement reached between environment ministers on the creation of a mechanism for sharing such data did not go far enough towards obliging public data providers to share information.

The head of the European Union Satellite Centre, based in Torrejón, Spain, warned that a lack of funding for satellite intelligence had resulted in a shortage of image analysts whose work was essential to monitoring crises and planning evacuations in the event of natural or man-made disasters.

European Union Satellite Centre: Homepage http://www.eusc.org/

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