In the past decade, Europe, along with the rest of the world, has started to face increasing challenges caused by climate change, humanitarian crises, natural disasters, extreme weather events, cybercrime and geopolitical instability.
In this extract from an article in the latest issue of OpenSpace magazine, we look at how organisations are working together using space technology and assets to help support, mitigate and resolve civil security and crisis events.
Protecting the Earth from space
According to the Global Risks Report 2025 commissioned by the World Economic Forum, geopolitical unrest, extreme weather events amplified by climate change and continued technological advancements, such as artificial intelligence (AI), are among the top concerns of organisations and society in general. Data and services provided by space systems have a very important role to play in helping to deal with many of the challenges and can also benefit from technological developments.
In November 2022, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched its Civil Security from Space (CSS) programme. The aim was to foster the use of space-based solutions that help save lives and livelihoods and enable organisations involved in civil security to prepare and then act swiftly in the event of humanitarian crises, law enforcement, and safety and emergency events – anytime, anywhere, for the benefit of everyone.
The primary objective of the CSS programme has been to build on and enhance existing and planned governmental and commercial capabilities to rapidly develop effective solutions, while also fostering long-term innovation. Co-funded by industry, the programme was designed to support the development of commercially viable solutions for the European market, backed by ESA.
“The CSS has been a pioneering programme, paving the way for end-users and industry to foster mutual understanding of how space-enabled services and products can deliver real benefits to users,” explains Hanna-Miina Sihvonen, Head of Civil Security from Space Programme Office at ESA. ”It also helps end-users gain clearer insights into the technologies available on the market and what they can offer. Most importantly, it gives users a platform to convey their needs, share their operational practices and goals, and articulate the problems they’re trying to solve.”
Bridging the gap between users and industry
”I’ve spent over 20 years working in civil security, and in an ideal world these kinds of solutions should have been in use for crisis responders and first responder organisations yesterday,” adds Hanna-Miina Sihvonen. “But with ESA’s CSS programme activities, we have been able to bridge the gap between users and industry.”
”CSS has gone beyond simply focusing on the technology – it adopts a user-centric approach and supports comprehensive capacity building within user organisations. You can’t just impose new technology on users; you have to walk alongside them, understand their situation, let them feed back their experiences into the system, and then identify the right organisation capable of turning the project into a viable commercial solution once the project ends.”
SAFEPLACE: A new crisis management platform
As part of the CSS programme, Starion is leading a multinational consortium developing a new service that will provide prompt, up-to-date situational awareness information for crisis and disaster management organisations. SAFEPLACE will leverage EO, wearable device-based positioning of personnel and assets, IoT data and satellite communications (satcom) services to help overcome challenges caused by poor communications, lack of access to the affected areas, data delays and bottlenecks, and the need to identify key information from raw data.
“SAFEPLACE offers a centralised and secure crisis management platform for relevant disaster management services and products. It will provide near real-time actionable information to an array of different stakeholders – be it for operation centres or first responders who deal with preparedness and crisis management,” says Alex Vorobiev, Programme Manager at Starion.
“What that means is there are a lot of different technologies, services and applications already being developed by experts in their domain. The purpose of SAFEPLACE is to bring these assets together, combining the information to create other value-added products and distribute all the information to downstream users in consolidated and standardised ways through its own portal or via APIs, ready to be integrated into existing crisis management software already utilised in operation rooms around the world. The SAFEPLACE platform not only provides a hub that can share data with national resilience nodes but can itself be replicated to provide the basis for those national nodes.”
Designed for fast support
“Another great advantage for SAFEPLACE is that it will provide multilingual guidance to crisis managers, using its AI-based large language models [LLM] to interpret user inputs and provide guidance in their preferred languages. This enables fast support for different actors across Europe and helps them make informed decisions in the face of complex emergencies such as wildfires, floods, toxic chemical spills and earthquakes.
”By fusing diverse data into a unified interface, SAFEPLACE will allow first responders and crisis managers to access critical information without the need for technical data expertise. Importantly, it can help keep the first responders, such as emergency services and those on the ground, safe. And, of course, the system must be trustworthy because in an emergency there is no room for error.”
Although there are several commercial satellite constellations that already offer timely EO data, SAFEPLACE goes further by combining this space-based data with terrestrial data. It will apply AI and advanced data fusion techniques to translate raw data into actionable information. This information can then be delivered directly through existing platforms already used by emergency responders, eliminating the need to learn new systems during a crisis.
PPRD-Med: promoting resilience
Another critical disaster response platform being developed for southern and eastern Mediterranean countries is the Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Natural and Man-Made Disasters in the Mediterranean (PPRD-Med) programme, which offers a collaborative web portal to strengthen resilience in the region. Countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia will benefit from this initiative, which uses publicly available information and offers access to secure data and tools, including educational, training and country-specific content.
PPRD-Med is part of ESA’s Rapid and Resilient Crisis Response (R3) programme. It is funded by the European Union Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG-ECHO) and led by the International Science and Technology Center (ISTC). The platform will provide a broad, publicly available knowledge base about disaster risk management and secure access to educational and training (‘didactic’) information and tools. Future phases will add operational tools, such as stakeholder and resource mapping, designed for use during crises caused by natural or technological hazards, including technological incidents triggered by natural hazards.
Alex Vorobiev, who also works on this project, comments: “PPRD-Med is a ‘wiki’ type interactive platform that empowers member states with access to essential information and tools. This gives them the information they need to deal with each disaster and make informed decisions. To ensure strict data sovereignty and privacy, the team follows a ‘security by design’ approach, ensuring authentication, confidentiality, integrity and privacy of information.”
Find out more
This is an extract from the latest issue of OpenSpace magazine. Subscribe to read the full version and more, including articles on digital twins, space weather and the unsung heroes of space missions, plus an interview with the Director of the Spanish Space Agency.
