The International Charter "Space and Major Disasters" is a non-binding charter which provides for the charitable and humanitarian acquisition and transmission of satellite data to relief organizations in the event of major disasters.
The assorted satellite assets of various corporate, national, and international space agencies and entities provide for humanitarian coverage which is wide albeit contingent.
First activated for a landslide in Slovenia in November 2000,[1] the Charter has since brought space assets into play for numerous floods, earthquakes, oil spills, forest fires, tsunamis, major snowfalls, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and landslides,[2][3] and furthermore (and unusually) for the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370[4] and for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak.
In that year the live satellites and their instrumentalities included: The high and very high resolution radar sensors of Risat-1, RADARSAT-2, TerraSAR-X, and TanDEM-X and Sentinel-1A; the optical high and very high resolution sensors of UK-DMC 2, Landsat 7 and 8, SPOT series 5, 6, and 7, Pléiades 1A and 1B, PROBA 1, SJ-9A, GF-1, KOMPSAT-2, IRS-P5 (Cartosat-1), Cartosat-2, Resourcesat-2, Oceansat-2, RapidEye, Kanopus-V, and Resurs-P, and the HDTV camera mounted the Kibo module of the International Space Station; and the medium and low optical sensors of POES, GOES, FY-3C, the Metop series, the first two Meteosat generations, and Meteor-M.
Archival data from defunct satellites such as ALOS, ENVISAT, ERS, CBERS, IRS-1C, Astra 1D, IRS P4, P6, IMS-1, RADARSAT-1, SAC-C, SPOT 1-3 & 4, UK-DMC, Landsat-5 and NigeriaSat are also available.