Storm Alex

Record responsiveness

In just a few hours, Pléiades provides images of the affected areas

During the night of Friday 2 to Saturday 3 October 2020, the Alpes-Maritimes were hard hit by storm Alex. It resulted in flash flooding in the Vésubie and Roya valleys, and caused countless damage.

As of October 3, French civil protection activated Copernicus Emergency Management Service "Rapid Mapping" and CNES immediately programmed the Pleiades satellites (capable of providing very high resolution photographs in record time) to image these two valleys for a minimum 8 days.

In just a few hours, the first images were delivered to institutional players. At the request of CNES, SERTIT also produced emergency thematic maps. All this information contributes to the analysis of the dynamics of floods in near real time, and constitutes an important decision support tool for crisis management.

Access to Pléiades images

As a reminder, there is a portal dedicated to access to Pléiades images called DINAMIS, with an Image Catalog and an application allowing you to request images that are not in the Catalog. In this case, new images of the Alpes Maritimes will quickly be added to the Catalog with the first images acquired.