Small-Aircraft Service for Instant Situational Analysis during emergency & disaster relief operations

The SASISA feasibility study assessed and validated a new service that enables emergency and disaster relief organisations to exploit overhead remote sensing during the most critical initial response phase for improved situational awareness. Current practice still treats aerial surveillance of disasters as a non-real-time activity, with results often only available days later. The combination of satellite and terrestrial technologies in the modular system architecture of the SASISA service offers transformational change for the benefit of improved emergency response, while at the same time complying with established operational modes and financial limitations of civil public sector user agencies. SASISA aimed to prove the concept of a reliable, low-cost, real-time disaster-surveillance service for first responders and other civil security-sector users in combining a variety of existing space and terrestrial technologies in a new modular approach therbey permitting a much higher performance/price ratio and more flexibility in fast, effective emergency response than current operational approaches. This new capacity validated by SASISA was identified by users as a required enabler for the safety and security performance that is expected by European citizens. SASISA was to prepare the ground for a versatile, commercially viable new service that satisfies these operational requirements in Europe and potentially also beyond. With active involvement of stakeholder and users, the feasibility study investigated, analysed and defined the best feasible implementation of the service, to prove the concept in collaboration with the users and to prepare the ground for a viable business case to sustain the system and its associated services.