The International Charter "Space and Major Disasters" is a non-binding charter which provides for the charitable and humanitarian acquisition and transmission of satellite data to relief organizations in the event of major disasters. Initiated by the European Space Agency and the French space agency CNES after the UNISPACE III conference held in Vienna, Austria, in July 1999, it officially came into operation on November 1, 2000, after the Canadian Space Agency signed onto the charter on October 20, 2000. Their space assets were then, respectively, ERS and ENVISAT, SPOT and Formosat, and RADARSAT.
The assorted satellite assets of various corporate, national, and international space agencies and entities provide for humanitarian coverage which is wide albeit contingent. First activated for a landslide in Slovenia in November 2000,[1] the Charter has since brought space assets into play for numerous floods, earthquakes, oil spills, forest fires, tsunamis, major snowfalls, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and landslides,[2][3] and furthermore (and unusually) for the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370[4] and for the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak.[5] As of 2015, fifteen space agencies are signatories; dozens of satellites are available with image resolutions ranging from 8 kilometres (5 mi) per pixel to about 0.3 metres (1 ft) per pixel.[6] As of August 2018, it had had 579 activations, from 125 countries, and had 17 members, which contributed 34 satellites.[7] It won the prestigious William T. Pecora Award in 2017.[8]