GMES - Observing our Planet for a Safer World

GMES, which stands for Global Monitoring for Environment and Security, is a joint initiative of the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA) aiming to operationally provide sound, reliable and affordable geo-information products throughout Europe and over the globe.

In order to protect our environment and sustain the living conditions on our planet, the European Union (EU) has implemented a series of environmental directives, like the Water Framework Directive, the upcoming Soil Thematic Strategy, the Urban Thematic Strategy, the Biodiversity Strategy, the Natura 2000 Network and Flood Directive as well as the new Common Agriculture Policy (CAP). The directives are obligating Member States to manage their natural resources in a sustainable way and to report the status of environment to the European Commission regularly. In addition, international policies such as the Kyoto and post-Kyoto policies or further efforts towards adaptation to Climate Change need to be served as well.

GMES responds to a number of these European directives and policies and aims to support users across Europe in their efforts of fulfilling their obligations. The programme addresses five main application areas:

In these key thematic areas GMES provides decision-makers a reliable, independent and permanent access to harmonised, meaningful and reliable data with regard to environmental and security issues.

GMES Services rely on state-of-the-art and up-to-date Earth observation data collected from space, air or through ground based measuring systems. The data, that is already available on national or regional level, is pooled and harmonised to provide useable, compatible and comparable information services. The output from GMES will become a vital source of timely and up-to-date environment and security information for the benefit of individual citizens and decision-makers (European, national, regional, local, corporations, etc). GMES also represents a great potential for businesses in the services market, which will be able to make use of the data and information it provides according a full an open access principle.

GMES information services are coming of age.  The first services are already operational and a large amount of information is becoming accessible, for the ultimate benefit of European citizens.  

GMES helps us to better monitor and understand our environment and to contribute to the security of every citizen.