Over the past 15 years, scientists and disaster responders have increasingly used satellite-based Earth observations for global rapid assessment of disaster situations. We review global trends in satellite rapid response and emergency mapping from 2000 to 2014, analyzing more than 1000 incidents in which satellite monitoring was used for assessing major disaster situations. We provide a synthesis of spatial patterns and temporal trends in global satellite emergency mapping efforts and show that satellite-based emergency mapping is most intensively deployed in Asia and Europe and follows well the geographic, physical, and temporal distributions of global natural disasters. We present an outlook on the future use of Earth observation technology for disaster response and mitigation by putting past and current developments into context and perspective.

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The physical geography of the Mediterranean renders it an ideal landscape for burning. But for thousands of years its fire regimes have been set directly and indirectly by humans. Because of the region's significance in Antiquity, it has been studied for a long time and has become for good or ill a paradigm for thinking about fire. In this regard the Mediterranean has been both a place to export ideas and a place to receive them. Today's thinking about the Mediterranean and fire is thus as complex as its intricate landscapes. But the fundamental reality remains, as first voiced by Theophrastus: fire is tame or feral as humans contain or unleash it, which they do not only by the torch but by close tending of the landscape.