Development of a real-time urban remote sensing initiative in the mediterranean region for early warning and mitigation of disasters

This project brings together a group of world class experts from research partner institutions in three countries: Turkey, Morocco and the USA, to plan and implement the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Science for Peace sponsored Mediterranean Dialogue Earth Observatory (MDEO). The observatory comprises a network of real-time satellite remote sensing ground stations, to be established in Morocco. This investigation will also include a networked geostationary receiving station for the European Space Agency's Meteosat. The primary objective of the project is to facilitate early warning and mitigation of a wide range of biogenic and anthropogenic disasters. The project will also address mitigation of epidemics and epizootics, through identification and monitoring of infectious disease vector and reservoir habitat. Some examples of common concern among participating countries are flooding, storms, forest fires, climate change and its impacts, land use problems in agriculture, recent public health incidents, such as malaria, avian influenza, swine flu, as well as oil and hazardous chemical spills along the seashores [1]. Archival and real-time remote sensing and generation of near-real-time spatial data products, utilizing high performance computing clusters [2, 3], are planned throughout the life cycle of disaster management, including vulnerability assessment, infrastructure safeguards, early warning, emergency response, humanitarian relief, as well as post-disaster damage assessment, reconstruction and societal recovery [4, 5].