The Geospatial Emergency management NEtwork for Support by Imagery Services for year 2000 (GENESIS 2000) Project is intended to federate a number of highly relevant experiences in Europe into a common offering of geospatial information services for the territory management in near-real time, with the support of today’s telecommunication network.

The goal of GENESIS 2000 is to offer seamless access in real time to valuable information derived from space imagery and integrated by specific service providers.

Potential customers will be civil protection information services.

The customer will access to these services through a standard Internet connection, using a standard browser as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer, with the possibility to obtain the same service level on a fixed workstation or on a portable PC connected via satellite to the GENESIS 2000 server.

One point of strength of such an open approach is that the customer will be able to get the best specialists for each specific application, and therefore build a customized service:

• from a choice of available content providers,
• on ad-hoc high performance servers.

The ideal GENESIS 2000, sponsored by the European Commission, Directorate-General XIII, Trans-European Telecommunications Network, distributed framework will be open to allow national organisations to incorporate their local detailed information (collected with ad-hoc ground sensors infrastructures) with the EO data; hence to allow customers to increase the added value of their current information system.

Currently, the project is going through its Feasibility & Market Validation Phase, aimed at:

• achieving quantitative measurement of the value added provided by such a service to the operational bodies in charge of disaster management, by analysing the whole process of geospatial data retrieval with the potential customer;
• supporting actions for the actual deployment of an European service for the provision of geospatial information to support civil protection information services;
• verifying the feasibility of the service via a pilot in 3 countries.
• validating the market, to pave the way for the full exploitation of the GENESIS services.

To achieve this aim two major goals have been identified:

• the set-up of a pre-operational European service infrastructure model, based as much as possible on existing facilities and services;
• the demonstration (1) of the model ability to serve representative user communities, through significant selected hazard management application cases, and (2) of the model self-sustainability.

One of the application cases to be tested during this first period involves Planetek Italia and Prefettura of Bari.

Prefetto of Bari has been in charge of environmental issues for the whole Puglia region (a wider area than the ordinary competence one, that is the province of Bari) since 1995. The central government attributed this responsibility to Prefetto in order to overcome an emergency situation afflicting the region coasts.

Hence Prefetto main task has been a complete renewal of the purification system along the 100 Km coastline. At present, Prefettura is interested in documenting the undertaken activities and monitor the coast status.

This implies detecting any harmful discharge at sea originated from one of the following sources:

• purification system inefficiency
• illegal sewage outflow
• illegal industrial
• discharge

The integration of Earth Observation and in situ data in a GIS will allow the deployment of a near-real time "harmful discharges" alert service enriched by supplying more detailed information to be stored as historical documentation into the Prefettura databases.

Co-ordinator: 

Matra Systèmes et Information, Paris, France

Contractors:

Alenia Spazio, Rome, Italy; Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg SERTIT, France; Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux-FUSAGx, Belgique; Planetek Italia, Bari, Italy; European Space Agency - ESRIN, Frascati, Italy; Spot Image, Toulouse, France; Meteo France, Toulouse, France; Service Interministériel de Défense et de Protection Civile du Bas Rhin, Strasbourg, France; Prefecture of Bari, Italy; Ministère wallon de l’Equipement et des Transports – Services d’Etudes Hydrologiques, Namur, Belgique.

Genesis 2000 is a project sponsored by the European Commission, Directorate-General XIII, Trans-European Telecommunications Network