Date: 10 January 2022
Location: Roseau, Dominica
Credit: Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, processed by the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre
Description:
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, acquired on 10 January 2025, shows Roseau, the capital of Dominica.
Dominica, often celebrated as the “Nature Island” of the Caribbean for its rugged coastline and lush mountainous interior, embodies both beauty and significant vulnerability. Its unique geography also makes it highly prone to multiple hazards. Most of the population resides along the coastal zones, exposing them to the consequences of storm surges. In addition, a steep mountainous terrain creates favourable conditions to landslides and flash river flooding, a chain of events which can be triggered by hurricanes. Since 2020, 13 hurricanes and tropical storms have made landfall in Dominica, each weaving a common thread of disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods.
In this context, the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre serves as a regional hub for Latin America and the Caribbean, supporting countries including Dominica in leveraging free and open Copernicus Earth Observation data to improve their disaster preparedness. Through close collaboration with regional stakeholders, the Centre is co-developing EO-based services such as flood extent mapping and landslide susceptibility mapping.
Additionally, the Centre empowers local communities by improving their skills in leveraging Copernicus data for disaster risk reduction with resources and training materials freely available on the Centre’s Digital Campus.
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Background Information
The Copernicus LAC Panama Centre’s activities take place within the overall context of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, which is a strategic framework for promoting cooperation between the EU and the LAC region on digital and space issues under the EU Global Gateway umbrella. Within this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) is coordinating the Centre’s implementation on the basis of a Contribution Agreement with the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) of the European Commission, and in close collaboration with Panama’s government, MIRE (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Government Innovation Authority (AIG), and SENACYT (National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation).
The CopernicusLAC Panama Centre will serve as a hub for innovation in the Latin America and Caribbean region, supporting national and local entities in leveraging Copernicus data and information to boost socio-economic benefits and resilience. In addition to providing engagement opportunities, the Centre is developing geospatial Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Earth Observation (EO) Services (addressing hydrometeorological hazards, wildfires, geological hazards, and hazard exposure) in close collaboration with local users and stakeholders, to whom they will be handed over to ensure that the unique needs of the region are addressed in the long term.
In addition, knowledge and skills transfer is a key element of the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre, which hosts a Digital Campus with access to training modules and educational resources for technical users and citizens alike. The Centre will also organise community-building events, policy dialogues and industry matchmaking, as well as hackathons and other EO data challenges to stimulate user adoption of Copernicus data and innovation. These events will also foster cross-collaboration among EO, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and other relevant ecosystems.
Finally, the Centre will support the development of a high-power computing and data storage cloud infrastructure for the LAC region. One of the final objectives of the Centre is to promote the development of communities of practice and to strengthen the knowledge and use of tools for DRR and other application areas in the public sector, academia, the private sector, and social organisations.
