Satellite-Based Crisis and Spatial Information Service (SKD)

The Satellitengestützter Krisen- und Lagedienst (SKD, Satellite-Based Crisis and Spatial Information Service) is run by Germany's Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) in Frankfurt am Main. It is the point of contact for federal authorities that need individual map and satellite-image products in crises and operational situations, such as large floods or major events with security risks, or to assess spatial information. It took over the operational services of DLR's ZKI-DE service on 1 January 2021.

After a consultation, the SKD team researches and procures suitable aerial and satellite imagery, combines it with official topographic data and specialist data, and produces products at four levels: data (imagery delivered as orthophotos, vector and raster data), basic topographic and satellite-image maps, maps with thematic overlays, and complex analysis products such as damage analyses. During the September 2024 Oder flood it tasked 10 radar and 3 optical satellite scenes and derived water masks; its published examples use Pléiades Neo, WorldView-3 and Capella Space imagery. Products are delivered as prints up to DIN A0, PDF or GeoPDF, data files, WMS/WFS services or interactive web applications, and requests up to the VS-NfD classification are handled.

The service is reachable daily from 08:00 to 20:00. It is available only to German federal institutions and eligible institutional grant recipients, for whom it is free of charge. BKG reports 345 orders for situational products from 22 federal institutions in 2024. For UEFA EURO 2024 it produced 121 map products with the Federal Police. The SKD is also Germany's civil point of contact for Copernicus SESA products from the EU Satellite Centre (SatCen).