About the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre

The Copernicus Latin America and Caribbean Panama Centre (CopernicusLAC Panama) is a regional hub which will enhance the resilience of the Latin America and Caribbean countries by supporting their spatial data management capacity and strategic use, in a region particularly vulnerable to climate change-induced weather events and geohazards.

Read more about the CopernicusLAC Panama Centre .

About the Specialised Processing Environment

The Specialised Processing Environment (PE) is an open source platform to support Hydromet Hazard applications with EO based services using data from the Copernicus Sentinel missions. This is complementary to the CopernicusLAC Platform.

Hydromet Hazards Services

The CopernicusLAC EO Service activities include the development of innovative services for disaster risk reduction based on Copernicus Sentinel satellite data. These services will be integrated into the future CopernicusLAC Panama Centre, which will provide users in Latin America and the Caribbean access to the information, services, and processing capabilities established by the Centre in the region.

Among the developed services, five of them will be dedicated to flood events. Specifically:

• flood extent mapping,

• flood frequency mapping,

• flood depth mapping,

• flood hazard mapping.

• urban flood mapping.

Copernicus Context

Beyond providing the Sentinel missions, Copernicus also provides dedicated services for flood monitoring and risk assessment through the Emergency Management Service (CEMS), including the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) and the Global Flood Monitoring (GFM) product.

Copernicus Emergency Management Services

The Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) offers a broad set of operational services to support disaster preparedness, response, and recovery:

• Rapid Mapping: Delivers near-real-time geospatial products (e.g., flood extent, damage maps) in the immediate aftermath of disasters.

• Risk and Recovery Mapping (RRM): Provides detailed geoinformation products for hazard and risk characterization, supporting prevention, preparedness, and post-disaster recovery planning.

• Exposure Mapping: Offers global datasets on human settlements and population distribution (e.g., GHSL) to assess exposure to hazards.

GloFAS and Global Flood Monitoring

The Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) is part of the CEMS Early Warning and Monitoring component. It provides:

• Global-scale flood forecasts up to 30 days in advance.

• Integration of meteorological forecasts, hydrological modeling (LISFLOOD), and satellite/in situ data.

• Tools for visualizing hydrographs, anomaly maps, and flood hazard levels.

In addition, the Global Flood Monitoring (GFM) product offers continuous, automated monitoring of flood-affected areas worldwide, using Sentinel-1 data to detect flood extent with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Details concerning the CEMS are provided in the dedicated section.