Key scientific issues of present day disaster management scenario

Nobody doubts that there are serious threats to the population of planet Earth, many from physical phenomena brought about by changes to the environment caused by human activities. A list of these would include threats from weather, natural disasters (although some of these, such as earthquakes, are not new threats, or brought about by human activity), disease and loss of adequate water of food supplies. These threats have not escaped the notice of governments, and although there is discussion over who is responsible and what should be (GEO) established by the first Earth Observation Summit in July 2003 which declared the need for “timely, quality, long-term, global information as a basis for sound decision making”. The second Earth Observation Summit in April 2004 agreed to a Framework which established the basic principles for preparing an Implementation Plan for a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). The plan also calls for support to countries, particularly developing countries, in their national efforts to collect data, use satellite and remote-sensing technologies for data collection and to access, explore and use geographic information. All of these intergovernmental initiatives come on top of the on-going activities of the United Nations, CEOS and IGOS, (The Integrated Global Observing Strategy) and ICSU and the efforts of international societies such as ISPRS, ICA, FIG. The paper sets out to review some of these activities and to address the issue of how organizations such as ISPRS can contribute to them. Such discussion must go alongside the technological developments which have occurred in the past 10 years or so. We have seen much more Earth observation data become available and the convergence of the nature and application of satellite data with airborne data, so that either could be used in the generation of digital elevation models, (DEMs), for example, or for mapping. The advances in Geographical Information Science (GI- - S) and associated GIS software, and of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), have helped to make geo spatial information a major source of data for government, commerce and industry.