Satellite Application Facilities (SAFs)

SAFs are dedicated centres of excellence for processing satellite data, achieved by utilising specialist expertise from the Member States. SAFs generate and disseminate operational EUMETSAT products and services and are an integral part of the distributed EUMETSAT Application Ground Segment.

Each SAF is led by the National Meteorological Service (NMS) of a EUMETSAT Member State, in association with a consortium of EUMETSAT Member States and Cooperating States, government bodies and research institutes. The lead NMS is responsible for the management of each complete SAF project. The research, data and services provided by the SAFs complement the standard meteorological products delivered by EUMETSAT’s central facilities in Darmstadt, Germany.

EUMETSAT supervises and coordinates the overall activities of the SAF network and the integration of the SAFs into the various operations within the EUMETSAT Application Ground Segment. It manages and coordinates interfaces — between the SAFs themselves and between SAFs and other EUMETSAT systems — overseeing the integration of SAFs into the overall ground segment infrastructure. By overseeing the entire network of SAFs, EUMETSAT ensures that services are delivered in the most reliable and cost-effective way.

SAFs currently use data from meteorological satellites both in geostationary and polar orbit.

The SAFs help deliver a variety of benefits, including:

• Improvements to short-range forecasting of severe weather hazards.
• Support to the aviation, agriculture, construction, gas, water and electricity industries.
• Better understanding of the causes and effects of pollution of the upper atmosphere and the depletion of ozone.
• Early warning of hazards.
• Better data for climate monitoring.
• Improved information for land use, ecology, disaster monitoring and agricultural forecasting.
• Benefits for sea transport, fishing and offshore industries.
• Improved data for input to Numerical Weather Prediction and the availability of user software packages for operational applications.
• Improved software packages and near-real time and offline products.

The main objective of the SAF Visiting Scientists (VS) programme is to allow experts/scientists from the EUMETSAT Member States, other than those involved in a particular SAF development, to acquire expertise in the field of the SAF activities/products. A second objective of the VS scheme is to allow scientists from other institutes to participate in, or contribute to, the SAF activities, in particular the algorithm development and product validation activities.

Types of activities

Depending on whether the VS stay at their home institute or move to the visited institute, two main types of VS can be distinguished:

1. Visiting Scientists (VS) who participate in the development activities of the SAF by spending a certain period of time at one of the SAF Consortium Institutes.
2. Associated Scientists (AS) who participate in the development activities of the SAF but stay 'at home' (no change of location).

In certain cases it might be necessary to combine the two types of activities, i.e. the VS activity may be carried out partly at the visited institute and partly at home.

Opportunities for Visiting Scientists

Current visiting scientist opportunities can be found at the relevant SAF web pages or acquired through the SAF help desk.

For requesting any additional information on the SAF Network go to Contact Us.

To directly contact the SAF Projects see the details below.