Epidemic Intelligence: Satellite-Enabled Applications for Health Early Warning Systems

The SAFE (Satellites For Epidemiology) project is co-funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) and coordinated by MEDES (FRANCE). In a twoday earthquake readiness exercise that was held on the island of Crete, Greece, on November 5-6, 2007, it demonstrated a component-based system for health early warning. The exercise that was coordinated by the Prefecture of Heraklion and FORTH-ICS, involved around 300 people from more than twenty organizations. Observers from ESA, the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC) and other organizations assessed the added value of satelliteenabled services not only in the acute phase following the disaster but also in post-disaster health management and epidemiological surveillance.