Pleiades in the context of the International Charter “space and major disasters”

The International Charter “space and major disasters” (referred as the Charter) aims at providing a unified system of space data acquisition and delivery to those affected by natural or man-made disasters through Authorized Users. Each member agency has committed resources to support the provisions of the Charter and thus is helping to mitigate the effects of disasters on human life and property. From the beginning of the Charter operations in 2000, CNES has provided a large amount of SPOT 2, 4 and 5 data (around 100 pre and post-disaster each year). The Pléiades satellites have started to contribute to the Charter by mid-2012 and are now fully operational in the Charter process. This paper shows several examples of results obtained from Pléiades data, and demonstrates the high value of Pléiades data in case of disasters.