The European Union, year after year, is being hit by forest fires. This puts European citizens at risk and causes tremendous costs economically and to nature and wildlife. Therefore 55 partners, with support of the European Commission, have joined forces in a project for rapid mapping of places at risk via satellites, the SAFER project.

The recent forest fires in Portugal and northern Spain as well as the massive floods in Taiwan have highlighted the importance of responding quickly to natural disasters. The EU-funded project SAFER ('Services and applications for emergency response') is working to make this possible by providing rapid mapping of disaster-prone areas and other tools to help optimise disaster response.

The project, financed with approximately EUR 27 million through the 'Space' Theme of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), is part of the larger Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.

In first priority, SAFER concentrates on rapid mapping during the response phase, with a response time objective of six hours after the emergency situation for the provision of reference mapping, and of 24 hours for the provision of assessment maps to assist fire fighters and other emergency and civil protection services on the ground in their rescue operations, speeding up the fight against forest fires. The gathering of such information would otherwise have to happen manually and be more time consuming and difficult.

Likewise, accurate imaging of disaster areas can also be difficult, particularly during fires when smoke obstructs the view. One of the technological objectives of the project is to make the most of radar and advanced imaging techniques to provide useful reference maps to be used during emergency response.

The overall purpose of SAFER is to reinforce Europe's capacity to respond to fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides and humanitarian crises. Building on the success of previous EU-funded projects, the partners aim to provide services not only during the emergency response phase but to create, refine and validate tools that will contribute to rehabilitation and reconstruction efforts as well as preparation for future events.

The SAFER-project has already proved to be useful in the fight against forest fires around Marseilles and the Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia. SAFER is one of the first tangible results of GMES.