Mandate, Mission & Membership

Following the UNISPACE III conference held in Vienna, Austria in July 1999, the European and French space agencies (ESA and CNES) initiated the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disasters’ with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) signing the Charter in October 2000. The UK joined the Charter in November 2005.

Since its formal operations began on 1st November 2000, the Charter has become increasingly important in the management of worldwide emergency disaster response. Today, eleven international space organisations are Charter members and that number will continue to grow as other space organisations offering complementary arrays of earth observing satellites are accepted as new Charter members.

At present, over 25 Charter member satellites orbit Earth covering large geographic regions. Any one of these satellites can be called upon at any given time when tropical storms, hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes or even oil spills reap havoc on Earth, on our environment or on people's lives.

For more details regarding International Charter members see disasterscharter.org.