The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a Regional Support Office (RSO) of UNOOSA’s programme ‘United Nations Platform for Space-Based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER)’ in Cyprus. The network allows UN-SPIDER to take advantage of the significant experience/capabilities of the Member States to promote the use of space tools for disaster risk reduction all over the world.
The new RSO will be located at the ERATOSTHENES Centre of Excellence. Its addition adds significant expertise on satellite technology to the UN-SPIDER network, and especially in the Eastern Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa region. Through the MoU, UNOOSA and ERATOSTHENES CoE will work together in areas including emergency response, disaster risk reduction and management, capacity-building on space-based technologies for disaster management, technical advisory support, and the dissemination of methods and results from Earth Observation. The agreement is effective from 17 February 2025 for a period of 3 years. For more information: https://www.un-spider.org/network/regional-support-offices/eratosthenes-centre-excellence-coe. Dr Marios Tzouvaras, Research Coordinator of the ERATOSTHENES CoE and Coordinator of the newly established UN-SPIDER Cyprus Regional Support Office, stated: “This is a great opportunity for the ERATOSTHENES CoE to make its long-term research scientific knowledge available to support emergency response, disaster risk reduction and management efforts when needed. Earth Observation and the analysis of complex satellite imagery from a variety of sensors provide substantial benefits in risk reduction from various disasters, such as earthquakes, landslides, coastal/soil erosion, forest fires, floods, drought, etc.