Commercial satellites included in ESA's Third Party Missions (TPM) programme deliver data that support critical applications in humanitarian aid efforts.

In the summer of 2021, as a string of wildfires advanced across parts of Portugal, Spain and Italy, GEOSAT generated high-resolution maps to detail the spread of the fires. During the 2022 flooding of the Kabul River in Pakistan, PlanetScope provided very high resolution imagery of the flooded river basin. More recently, very high-resolution optical images captured by Pléiades Neo revealed the extensive damage from the Valencia floods in extreme detail.

These are just a few of the many ways these and other missions support the monitoring of natural disasters and enable first responders to assist civilians during emergencies.

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Learn more about cases where commercial missions have helped:

Devastating floods in Spain witnessed by satellites

Remote sensing data map impacts of natural hazards

Learn more about the role commercial data play in the Copernicus Emergency Service:

Copernicus Emergency Management Service