Validation of EO-derived information for crisis management: a Digital Earth perspective in the VALgEO expert community

Abstract

New generation remote sensing technologies open today new application areas and demonstrate their effectiveness providing geo-information in support to disaster management. In the same time, new challenges can be identified and among them has a crucial role the validation of geo-information under the new specific constraints dictated by the disaster management application area. In the frame of the Digital Earth concept geo-information is a sharable resource, and a resource is truly shareable not only if we know the formal code used to made it � and then we can read it - , but also, - and in particular case during disaster - if we know the reliability of this information. This is crucial in order to avoid information overflow and time wasting during the decision-making process in support to disaster management. The �International workshop on validation of geo-information products for crisis management�, VALgEO 2009, was held at the Joint Research Centre, in Ispra, Italy on 21-23 November 2009. The purpose of this first workshop was to initiate a dialogue between the main actors of Emergency Response Services around validation and to raise awareness on the necessity for an independent formal assessment of geo-information for disaster management. This special issue includes a collection of invited papers presented at the workshop. It gathers interdisciplinary initiatives where the majority of the contributions either directly or implicitly address different aspects of validation of geo-information generated following a disaster, ranging from flood information to forest fires and earthquake damage assessments.JRC.G.2 - Global security and crisis managemen