Economic development and population growth have unleashed unprecedented change in the Earth’s atmosphere. Earth observation (EO) satellites have propelled not only our ability to investigate this change and to monitor the consequences in real-time but also to make issues around weather and climate more visible and understandable for the general public.

In an age when human activities threaten the planet with potentially irreversible negative changes, it is important that we have access to satellite imagery to improve our ability to understand and reduce the impact of the rise in disaster and climate risks over the coming decades. These will be decisive years in gauging the long-term sustainability of our current development models.

An understanding of key indicators around climate change, such as sea-level rise, the retreat of glaciers, permafrost and Arctic sea ice, and desertification, is enhanced by satellite imagery and is important to ensuring that decision-makers and public opinion alike are well-informed on the evolving nature of risk as we enter a year of opportunity for the global development agenda. 2015 will see the world reaching agreement on a post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction but also of course, on a universal development agenda for the coming decades and a Climate Agreement. EO will play a key role in monitoring progress on implementation of these initiatives.

The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) represents the civil Earth-observing programmes of more than 30 of the world’s leading space agencies. These agencies are collectively investing billions of dollars in space infrastructure with the capability to provide sophisticated, continuous, and sustained observations of the entire planet. The world is familiar with the application of these observations to the task of forecasting, tracking, and alerting society to extreme weather events like cyclones, and significant progress has been made by space agencies in facilitating access to a wide range of observations in response to a much wider range of disasters. However, the space agencies represented in CEOS have resolved that more could and should be done to realise the full potential of the application of satellite EO to disaster risk management, in particular by better supporting national and local decision-makers to implement disaster risk reduction and resilience measures, during all disaster risk management phases.

This report explores how satellite EO can contribute to the main challenges of disaster risk reduction, across a range of different countries and addressing varying capacity and infrastructure. It also highlights some of the main capabilities of satellite EO, their applications, and the challenges we face in converting information collected in space to knowledge of value to societal challenges, delivered in a timely way to users at all levels of government here on Earth.