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DMT assumes a major assignment in the ESA project “Terrafirma” provides information on ground movement throughout Europe Beginning in January of 2010, DMT GmbH & Co. KG will be contributing to the third phase of the “Terrafirma” project supported by the ESA – the European Space Agency. The objective is to create a pan-European information service that registers movements of the earth’s surface and helps reduce the resultant hazards and risks for people, buildings and infrastructures. In this third phase of the project, these geohazard information services are organized along three thematic lines: Hydrogeology, Tectonics and Flood, as well as a Wide Area product. The earth’s surface is in motion all over Europe. The causes are subsidence, landslides, tectonic activity, floods and coastal erosion. Such movements can represent a major hazard for people, buildings and all types of infrastructure. Often the effects can be aggravated by climate change – in coastal regions, for instance. Damage traceable to such events in the European Union is estimated to exceed ten billion Euros per annum. The ESA started the “Terrafirma” project in 2003, in order to be better able to recognize and evaluate these risks in the future. With recurring, satellite-based radar surveys of the Europe’s terrain, complemented by geological, geophysical and geodetic expertise, a comprehensive database has been created and is regularly updated. These data make possible far better evaluation of the risks associated with planning for infrastructure projects, for instance. Project planning is rendered safer and surer, and damage can ultimately be minimized. DMT will be involved in phase three of the Terrafirma Project, beginning in January 2010 and will be responsible primarily for validating the data and for technical integration of the data into the various user applications. “We form the interface between the specialized companies that handle radar data evaluation and the clients who make use of this data. These might, for instance, be mining authorities desiring to know whether abandoned mines represent a hazard due to ground movements and the extent of resulting damage at the surface,” explains Karsten Zimmermann, project manager at DMT. The project is to be completed in its entirety in 2012 and will then be available as a fully operational service for governments, residents and commercial firms all across Europe. About DMT
:: DMT GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Essen, Germany, is an independent engineering and consulting
company, international in its activities. About six hundred employees (of whom more than seventy percent are
engineers, scientists and technicians) provide services in the form of individualized consulting and assistance tailored specifically to the client’s
needs. They also serve as impartial assessors. The firm’s activities focus on the fields of natural resources
exploration, safety in buildings, construction and infrastructure projects,
mining, cokemaking technology, product testing and measurement instrumentation in industrial
settings. DMT is a member of the TÜV NORD Group. http://www.dmt.de/en/services/exploration-geosurvey.html
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Please send news releases to Wilhelm Sicking - WilhelmS@pennwell.com |
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