Back to Home
  • FAQs
  • CONTACT US
  • SITEMAP
  • COOKIE POLICY
  • GEANT GATEWAY
  • About GEANT
    • Partners
      • NREN Development and Support
    • Governance and Management
      • Partners' Assembly
      • Executive Board
    • Activities
    • European e-Infrastructure
      • Europe 2020 and GEANT
      • GEANT Expert Group
      • Women in ICT
    • Value of GEANT
      • History of GEANT
  • Network
    • The Network
    • Network Operations
      • Operations Teams
      • Operations Centre
      • Network Security
    • Global Connectivity
      • Global Connectivity: The Benefits
      • Global Connectivity: World Regions
      • Global Users and Applications
      • How to Connect to the network
      • Global Service Collaboration
    • Research and Education Networks
    • Campus Best Practice
    • Environmental Impact
      • Carbon accounting
      • Adopting a Greener Corporate Outlook
      • Events & Case Studies
      • Sustainability Policy
  • Innovation
    • Research Programmes
      • Network Architectures for Horizon 2020
      • Technology Testing for Specific Service Applications
      • Identity and Trust Technologies for GEANT Services
    • Testbeds
    • Foresight
    • Open Call
    • Standards
  • Services
    • Connectivity Services
      • GEANT IP
      • GEANT L3VPN
      • GEANT Plus
      • GEANT Lambda
      • GEANT Open
      • GEANT Bandwidth on Demand
      • GEANT Testbeds Service
    • Network Performance Services
      • perfSONAR
      • eduPERT
      • GEANT Security
      • GEANT Framework
    • User Access and Applications
      • eduroam
      • eduGAIN
      • eduPKI
      • eduCONF
    • Cloud Services
    • Services Registration Authority
      • SSL Certificates
      • Request a Certificate
    • Namespace Registry
      • urn:geant Registry
      • URN: FAQs
      • URN: Request Form
      • geant.net/uri Registry
    • Training
      • GEANT Showcase
  • Users
    • Health and Medicine
      • DECIDE
      • neuGRID
      • OutGRID
      • Sim-e-Child
      • TEMDEC
      • ITHANET
      • EMBL-EBI
    • Energy
      • CAREN
      • ITER
    • Earth Observation
      • PAGASA
      • EMSA
      • CAREN glaciers
      • TIGGE and GEANT
      • THEOS and GEANT
    • Particle Physics
      • LHCOPN
      • LHCONE
      • BELLE II and GEANT
    • Space
      • GEANT and ORIENTplus
      • EXPReS Project
      • NEXPReS
    • Society
      • Sichuan earthquake
    • Arts and Education
      • ShanghAI Lectures
      • LOLA
      • ASTRA Project
      • perfSONAR MDM
      • Opera Oberta
      • e-Education
    • Horizon 2020
    • User Advisory Committee
    • User Support
    • User Posters
  • News & Events
    • News
      • News Archive - 2013
      • Press coverage
    • Events
      • TNC 2015
    • CONNECT magazine
      • Archived Issues
    • Representing GEANT
    • Press Kit
    • Follow Us
  • Resources
    • Deliverables
    • Open Call deliverables
    • White Papers
    • Knowledge Sharing
    • Media Library
      • GEANT Case Studies
      • GEANT Media Library: Project videos
      • GEANT Media Library: Interviews
      • GEANT Showcase Presentations
      • GEANT Media Library: Audio
      • GEANT Media Library: Maps
      • GEANT Media Library: Brochures
      • GEANT Media Library: Presentations
      • User Posters
    • Partner Resources
      • Exhibition Stands
      • Image Library
    • Intellectual Property
  • Open Call
    • About
    • Applications and Tools
    • Authentication
    • Network Architecture and Optical Projects
    • Software Defined Networking
    • Videos

Arts and Education
Energy
Earth Observation
Health and Medicine
Horizon 2020
Particle Physics
Society
Space

​GÉANT and ORIENT – enabling faster disaster relief after Sichuan earthquake

The Challenge

In May 2008 a devastating earthquake struck Sichuan in China. Measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale, it was so strong that the tremor was felt across the entire country, with buildings in Beijing, 1,500km away, swaying due to the earthquake. Over 68,000 people died and a further 4.8 million were left homeless. The challenge was to aid vital disaster relief and reconstruction work in Sichuan, China by quickly sharing high resolution satellite images between Europe and China following the devastating earthquake.

The Solution

Access via GÉANT and ORIENT to satellite images from unexplored areas of destruction in Sichuan made it possible for the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to determine the severity of damage, and to help protect the area from further risk when rebuilding began.  The high capacity and performance of these networks allowed the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) to work alongside researchers from the Centre for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (Chinese Academy of Sciences), helping in the vital disaster relief and reconstruction of the area.

Key Benefits

The combination of the pan-European, high capacity GÉANT network and the ORIENT Europe/China link enabled fast transmission of critical satellite images from Italy directly to those leading the relief work. Analysing the impact of the earthquake and helping plan reconstruction work demanded a truly international collaboration.

​“Modern communication networks such as GÉANT and ORIENT are essential for an effective and speedy collaboration between the European Commission's researchers and local government in the wake of the Sichuan earthquake in China. In such a situation of natural and human disaster, we cannot afford to rely on conventional means of communication, such as fax and post, but need modern tools for carrying out a proper analysis within short deadlines. GÉANT and ORIENT provide the bandwidth to transport high-detail images, thereby making an important contribution to speeding up the reconstruction of infrastructure and to saving human lives.”

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media

 

​Partners in the project:

​GÉANT: www.geant.net
ORIENTplus: http://www.orientplus.eu
JRC: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/index.cfm


  • GEANT
  • EU flag
  • European Commission Communications Networks, Content and Technology
  • Copyright
  • Credits
  • Legal