This Echo is READ ONLY !   NO Un-Authorized Messages Please!
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

European Space Agency

Press Release

Satellites to focus on UNESCO World Heritage sites

24 June 2003
 
Earth Observation satellites will help safeguard hundreds of natural
and cultural World Heritage sites, under the terms of an agreement
signed by ESA and UNESCO at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget. 
 
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation) Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura and ESA
Director-General Antonio Rodotà launched the Open Initiative
partnership on Wednesday 18 June. The intention is to have other
space agencies progressively join the partnership, and help
developing nations monitor World Heritage sites on their territories
more effectively. 

ESA and UNESCO are already co-operating in a joint project called
BeGo (Build Environment for Gorilla) to use satellite data to map
remote mountain parks in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic
of Congo. These parks are either World Heritage sites or candidate
sites, making up the last refuge of the less than 600 mountain
gorillas still alive. But human encroachment on the parks in search
of fuel, farmland and hunting threatens the gorillas' survival. 

From the Great Barrier Reef to Stonehenge, there are 730 different
sites on UNESCO's World Heritage list - 563 of them cultural, 144
natural and 23 both. UNESCO considers 33 of them currently under
threat. The idea of the Open Initiative is that data from space will
be used to monitor these sites, alerting authorities to land use
changes that could place the sites in danger. Following ESA's
agreement with UNESCO NASA is near to following suit and there have
also been requests to join the Open Initiative from the Indian,
Japanese, Canadian and Brazilian space agencies. 
 

Observing the Earth: to understand, secure, and benefit
 
The morning before the signing took place, the ESA stand at Le
Bourget hosted a special session on 'Observing the Earth - Why is it
important?'. Split into three sections, the session highlighted how
satellite images could be used to understand and secure our planet,
as well as benefit the lives of our people.

David Llewellyn-Jones, of the Space Research Centre at the University
of Leicester, and Herbert Fischer of University Karlsruhe in Germany
spoke on the first theme. "Satellites contribute to research into
global climate change by observing globally, with continuity,"
explained Llewellyn-Jones. "Only satellites can provide the coverage,
continuity, and consistency that climate change research requires."

On the theme of how satellite imagery can help secure our planet,
Steffan Kuntz of remote sensing company Infoterra outlined ESA's
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) joint
initiative with the European Commission.

And Mark Jones, Editor of Reuters AlertNet - which is a global
communications network, intended to swiftly inform the humanitarian
community about emergency situations - presented an analysis of what
non-governmental organisations in the field want most out of Earth
Observation. 

"Under the right circumstances, Earth Observation can help in all key
areas," said Jones. "This goes from preparedness - providing early
warning of disasters - to assessing their extent, planning response
operations and monitoring the scene of the disaster to see we leave
the scene as we found it." 

Jones quoted one experience of the International Federation of the
Red Cross. Responding to an earthquake in Turkey in 1999, they found
the affected area stretched far beyond their expectations, stretching
110 km across. A satellite image would have identified the true scale
of the disaster far sooner.

The final theme was concerned using satellite images to benefit
people, with Robin Stephens of UK-based firm Fugro GEOS and Fabio
Rocca of Italy's Politecnico di Milano.

Rocca spoke about how measurements of ground movement from hundreds
of kilometres away in space can actually be extraordinarily precise -
and these results can be used to accurately assess geophysical risk. "
This is an application unmatchable with ground based instruments,"
said Rocca. 

By combining different radar images taken by ESA's ERS or Envisat
spacecraft together - a technique called interferometry - ground
movement on the scale of a millimetre can be detected. Applications
include identifying subsidence caused by urban tunnelling or water,
gas or oil extraction and detecting minute tectonic changes in an
area that may foretell more serious earthquakes to come. 

The session was concluded by Jose Romero of the Swiss Agency for the
Environment, Forests and Landscape. He discussed how satellites
provide 'environmental intelligence' for the various multinational
environmental agreements set up to combat the various threats that
our global environment faces.

Romero added: "The advantages of Earth Observation are that it has
global coverage, is scalable from big to small areas with time
periodicity, and above all it is cost effective."

 - END OF FILE -
==========

@Message posted automagically by IMTHINGS POST 1.30
---