Date: 30 January 2025
Location: La Union, El Salvador
Credit: Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, processed by the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre
Description:
This Copernicus Sentinel-2 image from 30 January 2025 shows La Union, El Salvador.
El Salvador’s geography makes it especially susceptible to disasters such as earthquakes as a result of its location on the border of the Caribbean Plate and the Cocos Plate, which meet in the Central American Trench, an extremely seismically active region. In December 2024, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck the country, with the epicentre located in the department of La Union on the south-eastern coast.
The free and open data delivered by Copernicus can be leveraged to monitor the consequences of seismic activity in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, helping to support emergency operations following earthquakes and other seismic events.
To support El Salvador and other countries in the LAC region in harnessing the benefits of Copernicus open data, the activities of the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre include stakeholder and user engagement, as well as online and in-person training courses. The materials from these courses, including some related to seismic activity monitoring, are available for free on our Digital Campus. The Centre is also co-developing Earth Observation-based services focused on disaster risk reduction related to Geological Hazards, including earthquakes.
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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) Pilot Services (addressing hydrometeorological hazards, 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 Earth Observation (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.
