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The International Charter on Space and Major Disasters, first established by the French and European Space Agencies in 1999, is set to be chaired by the UK for the next six months.

The charter is become ever-more vital in recent years as natural disasters seem to be peaking and the charter has already been activated 12 times in 2011.These calls have included requests for satellite imagery of Japan after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, and for data relating to the flooding in Queensland, Australia, in January.

When a disaster strikes a region, images taken from orbit are often critical tools in helping emergency responders deal with the crisis. Satellite maps can show the extent of the damage or the areas under water and are vital to NGOs, UN agencies and national civil protection centres to guide their aid efforts on the ground, pinpointing still-passable roads and the best locations to set up refugee camps or mobile medical units.

In Britain, the key player is the Disaster Monitoring Constellation (DMC) International Imaging company in Guildford, Surrey. The centre manages five satellites, built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, that are owned individually by Algeria, China, Nigeria, Turkey and the UK. These five countries have together created a system specifically designed to respond to disasters, offering the DMC the capability to acquire satellite images of anywhere on Earth at least once a day.

David Willetts, the minister for space in the UK government said:"we really are one of the world's leaders in satellite technology and it's great when as well as being put to commercial use, it's also being used for providing crucial information when there's a humanitarian disaster," in an interview with BBC News.

This news item originally appeared on the BBC News website