The CopernicusLAC Centre has reached a major milestone in the development of its Earth Observation (EO) Services: the development of four additional services has been completed and are now fully operational and available for demonstration on the CopernicusLAC platform.
Three of the new services address Hydrometeorological Hazards, with a particular focus on floods, providing key insights for disaster risk management, planning, and emergency response:
- Flood extent mapping: which delineates the maximum area affected during a flood event.
- Flood depth mapping: which estimates maximum water depth at each pixel categorised as flooded.
- Flood frequency mapping: which shows how often each pixel has been flooded over time.
For more details on the Hydrometeorological Hazards Services and products over Colombia and Belize, check this factsheet.
The fourth and last new service which is now fully operational is related to Geological Hazards and focuses on landslide susceptibility and hazard mapping, supporting land-use planning and infrastructure protection. For more information on this service and derived products, check the following factsheet.
Each service has undergone an intensive eight-month development phase and will now enter a three-month demonstration involving government partners from the Caribbean, Colombia, and Peru.
What the demonstration will involve
Between September and December 2025, participating institutions will access the CopernicusLAC platform, launch the services, and generate products tailored to their operational needs. They will also provide feedback on the services’ usefulness, any issues encountered, and their potential for future operational use.
Regional demonstrations
Caribbean: Flood services for regional resilience
In the Caribbean region, the demonstration will include two additional applications:
- Flood Map Labelling
Entities will use this tool along with the flood extent mapping service to build a catalogue of past flood events, enriched with metadata describing the meteorological phenomena which caused them, such as storm type, maximum wind speed, and peak accumulated precipitation.
- Map Fetching by Metadata
This catalogue will serve as a flood prevention resource. When a similar event occurs (e.g., a hurricane with comparable wind speed), users will be able to retrieve historical flood maps and use them as predictors of the potential flood footprint.
This innovative approach aims to improve preparedness and decision-making by leveraging historical data and satellite-based services.
Colombia: Monitoring Floods in La Mojana
In Colombia, the flood extent mapping service will be systematically executed over La Mojana, a region of high environmental value, to enable continuous monitoring of recurrent floods. The recently updated flood frequency product provides a clear view of the most flood-prone areas, supporting informed decision-making for risk mitigation and land management.
Additionally, the flood depth mapping service will be available on demand, allowing users to generate water depth maps based on selected flood extent events. The platform also includes exposure maps, such as crops and livestock distribution, which can be integrated with flood depth data to estimate the impact of flooding on agricultural assets.
Peru: Landslide Hazard Mapping with Local Data
In Peru, the landslide susceptibility and hazard mapping service will be executed on demand, using local datasets such as geological maps and inventories of past landslides. The service transforms this input into two probabilistic maps: one showing landslide susceptibility per pixel, and another one per slope unit.
Combined with the outputs of the KinesIS terrain motion mapping service (available from October 2025), which delivers a map of average terrain motion rates; these results will enable the reclassification of slope units into four hazard categories (active, dormant, inactive, and attention). This integration will improve the accuracy of landslide risk assessments for effective mitigation strategies.
Strengthening Regional Disaster Preparedness
This milestone is part of the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre’s ongoing efforts to strengthen geospatial capabilities across Latin America and the Caribbean, by leveraging the free and open satellite data from Copernicus to advance climate resilience and disaster preparedness.
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Background Information
The activities of the Centre fall within the overall context of the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, which is a strategic framework to promote cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region on digital and space issues under the umbrella of the EU Global Gateway strategy. In this context, the European Space Agency (ESA) coordinates the implementation of the Centre 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 the Government of Panama, the MIRE (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the SENACYT (National Secretariat for Science, Technology and Innovation).