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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B7. Istanbul 2004 
Spot satellites were initially tasked but the requests were 
cancelled since optical data are not appropriate for oil spill 
detection, this led to a modification of the ECO scenarios 
advising tasking of only the radar satellites. 
Therefore Radarsat and ERS-2 satellites were tasked and ESA 
provided Envisat ASAR images though the satellite was still on 
its commissioning phase. The only useful information 
according to recent feedback from CEDRE, French centre in 
charge of operational aspects in case of major oil spill accident, 
was the Envisat data clearly showing the oil slick following the 
movement of the tanker before she sunk: 
Envisat ASAR image acquired 
on November 17, 2002 €& 10h45 UTC 
Oil spill from 
the Prestige 
Ship position 
at acquisition time 
  
2.5 Volcanic eruption 
The Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo 
erupted on January 17, 2002, and subsequently sent streams 
of lava into the city of Goma on the north shore of Lake Kivu. 
More than 100 people were killed, more than 12,000 homes 
were destroyed, hundreds of thousands people were forced to 
flee from the city. However, during the weekend, most of the 
inhabitants of Goma started to come back to their homes, even 
if the volcano still threatened the city. At this time, the problem 
was to host all the people coming back to the city and whose 
homes were damaged. 
The Belgian Civil Protection authorities asked for the activation 
of the Charter on January 21, 2002. Again all available satellites 
from the Charter members (ERS-2, Spot, and Radarsat) were 
tasked but the Spot acquisitions were unusable due to cloud 
cover. The user requested for two kinds of information: 
- damages caused by the lava flow over the city of Goma, 
- possible areas for setting up of the refugees’ camps. 
Three types of product were delivered to the user: 
- land-use map with identification of the lava, 
- lava flow location (updated with automatic change detection), 
road network extraction and location of refugees’ camps, 
- damages of the lava flow to the urban areas. 
Land use was extracted from a fusion of panchromatic and 
multi-spectral Spot archive images; lava flow was extracted by 
comparison of Radarsat fine mode images acquired before and 
after the event. The first map was provided to the user three 
days after the activation of the Charter. The user provided very 
useful feedback for the validation of the products: the 
rehabilitation tasks, but an image viewer software should be 
available on site which was not the case at that time. 
Most of the lava flow was well detected, but there were two 
areas of false alarm and the western lava flow was not detected. 
595 
This shows that, for this kind of event, even 10 m resolution 
may not be enough. Also, had other type of sensors been 
available together with SAR, more precise detection could have 
been done. 
Cartographie de la coulée de lave sur la ville de Goma, RDC - janvier 2002 
Impact sur le tissu urbain et Sur le réseau routier 
   
E = 
Tes 
3. CONCLUSION 
Despite the relatively limited number of the space systems 
involved in the Charter, encouraging results were obtained and 
significant improvements were performed thanks to the well- 
established relationship with the civil protection authorities. 
Additional satellites from ISRO, from the Disaster Monitoring 
Constellation (DMC) and from the future Japanese satellite 
(ALOS) will soon improve the global, systematic and more and 
more accurate coverage of our planet. Although the service 
does not yet come up to the end users’ expectations, it has 
become compatible with some of their operations and they now 
regard the Charter as a credible instrument. We still have to 
speed up the Charter process from its activation to the 
information delivery in order to improve the overall response 
time. 
In terms of data processing, we need to improve the algorithms 
between all sensors available and automation of the software to 
provide accurate damage assessment maps and not only change 
detection maps. These future final products must be 
immediately usable on the disaster site with a minimum training 
by the CPAs and also by the local authorities. 
Do not hesitate to use our web-site for additional information, 
suggestions and comments and to access to the full text of the 
Charter. 
References 
Bessis, J-L., Béquignon, J. and Mahmood, A., 2003. The 
International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” initiative. 
Acta Astronautica, 54 (2003), pp. 183-190. 
Bessis, J-L., Béquignon, J., and Mahmood, A., 2004. Three 
typical examples of activation of the international Charter 
“Space and Major Disasters”, Advances in Space Research, 33, 
(2004), pp 244-248. 
Executive Secretariat annual reports. 
Charter Project Managers (PM) reports. 
Charter Web: www.disasterscharter.org