Recent years have confronted mankind with many natural and manmade catastrophes. Today’s technology enables early warning, prevention and rescue operations. Disaster management is an important topic, as witnessed by many articles in this journal too. Important here is the availability of timely information. This has been recognised by European authorities (see sidebar) and led to the creation of the GMES programme. GMES aims at using remote-sensing data, especially today’s wealth of very high-resolution satellite data, to improve monitoring of the European and global environment for sustainable management of resources and security of citizens. The programme should ensure European independence in terms of critical data sources and is considered a European flagship programme next to the Galileo navigation system. Future high-resolution satellites should also be of European origin, and not exclusively American.

GMES Diamond
In May 1998, GES was launched with the ‘Baveno Manifesto’. After its formal adoption in 2001 it embarked upon its initial period (2002-2003). There followed an Implementation Period (2004-2008), with EC publication of a communication to its Parliament and Council outlining Action Plan 2004-2008. To keep actors involved there have been several recent conferences: on 9th March 2006, Toulouse Workshop: Expanding GMES services to regional entities; 24th March 2006, Budapest Workshop: Socio-economic impacts of GMES; 19th to 20th April 2006, GMES Conference in Graz: GMES Action Plan 2007-2015 and 21st to 22nd April 2006, Informal EU Council Competitiveness in Graz.

The goal of these conferences has been to agree on an ‘Action Plan for GMES for 2007-2015’, with identified milestones. The Graz conference explored how a ‘market’ might be developed for GMES beyond the mostly national governmental institutions. GMES is based on four interrelated components: services, observations from space, in-situ (including airborne) observations and data integration and information management capacity. Together these have been called the ‘GMES diamond’. The data is made available via GMES services. A few already exist; however, the majority is still to be developed. The goals of GMES are:

• Informational: creation of a European Shared Information System (ESIS) for exchange of a wide range of information on environment and security matters. By 2008 the ESIS, together with the GMES Information Highway, should have been established, using both in-situ and satellite data
  
• Collaborative: bringing data and information providers together with users to increase mutual understanding and agreement on how to make environmental information available to the people who need it. By 2008 there has to be a Partnership of Key European Actors working together
  
• Organisational: creating permanent dialogue through a specific authority and funding framework. By 2008 a GMES Secretariat and Advisory Council, and the Programme Office, should be off the ground.

• formal integration needed to be accelerated
  
• legislation needed to be adapted to facilitate development and deployment of Earth-observation applications, either at national or EU level, following the example of water-framework regulations
  
• timely availability, pricing and licensing of data, services and products were crucial for the deployment of GMES and needed to be anticipated in legal instruments
  
• partnerships were a key factor for integration, so that bilateral partnerships had to be encouraged.

Daniela Stoyneva graduated as an agricultural economist from the University of Economics in Varna (Bulgaria). After graduating she worked for three years in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Sofia, Bulgaria. In September 2005 she joined URSIT Ltd as consultant.