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Space is changing - or, at least, the way we use space is due to shift quite significantly. Instead of the historically narrow gamut of passive functions - such as imaging and weather observation - space will become the staging area for a staggering profusion of dynamic services designed to meet the needs of business, consumers and society at large.

In Europe, this changeover is being spearheaded by two broad programmes:

• The forthcoming Galileo network of navigation satellites
• GMES the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security initiative

As an active industrial and research player in both efforts, Thales Alenia Space is heavily involved in the development of products and applications that tie together information and data flows with robust observation, telecommunications and navigation capabilities. The chain is covered within the Space Alliance, thanks to Thales Alenia Space's sister company Telespazio, which covers the services issues.

Started in 1998 under the initiative of both the European Commission and the European Space Agency, GMES services are in their concrete implementation phase. They fall into three broad categories:

• Mapping (topography, road maps, land-use and harvest, forestry monitoring, mineral and water resources),
• Emergency response to natural and manmade events,
• Forecasting (marine zones, air quality and crop yields).

Three sub-sets of these services have been identified for "fasttrack" priority treatment and validation in 2008, namely emergency response, land monitoring and marine services. They will provide information to be used at Member States level, as is or in value added services, the so-called downstream services.

Many of GMES' services will flow from research projects supported by the EU's multi-year Framework Programme (FP) research budgets. A number of projects from the previous FP6 budget are coming to fruition now, while new ones are just starting under the current Seventh FP budget, which covers 2007-2013 and sets aside some €1.2 billion for GMES-related R&D and the pre-operational phase.

GMES services are complex, however, and require the integration of data from space-based and in-situ Earth observation capacities with user-driven operational application services. They also demand a certain "integration" of GMES' concrete benefits, ie assurances that services will offer advantages to as many countries as possible, explains Claire-Anne Reix, GMES manager with Thales Alenia Space.

"The EU will fund GMES' core services and some of the generic components of downstream services, as long as the latter can be shared among EU member states," she adds. "Such services will not be legitimate if they benefit only one member state. This, of course, puts the emphasis on services with broad applications and a broad user-base."

The GMES funds are partly allocated to the space segment in addition to the European Space Agency (ESA) budgets - the so called GMES Sentinels satellites, which will allow the sustainability of the observation space data. Thales Alenia Space is prime contractor for Sentinel-1 (radar observation) and Sentinel-3 (oceanography), which complement its large space contribution to the environmental and security domain with the Jason, Meris, ASAR, Cosmo-SkyMed, Meteosat, Pleiades, Vegetation programmes.

In addition to the space segment, Thales Alenia Space is involved in different programmes such as oceanography, risk management and maritime security, bringing its experience in the ground segment and interoperable information system, and in applications using all types of satellites, whether radar or optical. These activities are complemented by the strong experience of the other Thales divisions and centralised at the Thales GMES bureau headed by Luc Fonda.

Another horizontal issue is GMES' governance, she observes: "If you want GMES to take off as a big system, you will have to involve all member states. This is especially true when talking about risk-management services where government involvement is essential."

Thales has taken steps to address both the governance and research aspects of GMES' risk-management objectives.

For example, within the last five years, the French government has pushed its scientific institutes and industry to create a network of high-tech research "poles" around the country to maintain France's high-tech competitive edge. To date, 71 specialised poles have been established.

Thales was instrumental in creating an environment and emergency management "risk" pole, where the company is testing creative approaches to dealing with emergency situations in rapid and efficient ways.

One of these approaches plugs directly into GMES' governance objective. Known as CEMER (Centre Euro Méditerranéen de l'Environnement et des Risques), this initiative involves six working groups focused on various civil emergency and security challenges such as floods, fires, earthquakes, industrial hazards and so on. CEMER's structure pulls together all types of civil emergency actors, and has a steering board composed of government representatives at regional and local levels, according to Reix.

Thales is using the CEMER approach to work with other countries in order to create a wider thematic emergency-response-and-risk network for sharing environmental and risk management information.

On the commercial side of security, Thales has invested heavily in research and development to produce products and systems geared to helping Europe's fire, police and counter-terrorism authorities in the event of a disaster.

Thales' "Emergesat" system is a case in point. This lightweight, mobile tool combines space-based capabilities (with ground-based radio technologies such as mobile telephone and wireless broadcast) to provide applications like for medicine or water analyses.

"Reliable communication is the first capability authorities need in order to respond to a disaster. Emergesat is a single container with all kinds of communications tools for rapid deployment to a disaster area: in less than 15 minutes you have all-mode communications," explains Reix, adding that Emergesat is also compatible with GMES' broadband requirements for transmitting video, voice and cartographic information.

Whether guiding ships through dangerous waters or guiding consumer choices via satellite-furnished digital information, the space sector will overhaul the way we all interact.