The European Commission has chosen emergency management, land monitoring, and marine services as the first services to be developed for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). The Commission will shortly set up a GMES organisational structure to strengthen the management of GMES as these services will now enter into their pilot operational phase and are set to be ready in 2008. GMES’s remote sensing satellite systems together with land-, air- and sea-based techniques will provide the EU with geospatial information in support of different policies from climate change to civil protection. The emergency management, for example, will help with the forecasting of and response to natural (storms, fires, floods, tsunamis) and man-made (urban fires, chemical accidents) disasters and emergencies and, in the longer term, help prevent them from happening again. GMES has been chosen as the second flagship, with Galileo, of the EU’s future space policy. The third Space Council will take place at the end of November 2005 and will agree on the final EU space policy and programme to be kicked off before end of 2005.
