International expertise

Like the fledgling Kamal Ewida observatory, Purdue's observatory also uses two receiving stations to collect data from satellites and other remote sensing devices, which are then used by researchers to track natural disasters and those caused by human activity.

Kamal Ewida is funded mostly by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) through its Science for Peace and Security programme. This initiative gathers the expertise of its ally countries, and other countries in the Eastern European and Mediterranean regions, for projects that focus on environmental sustainability, security, and other important global issues.

Nato is providing $78 000 in 2009, with a further $315 000 over the next three years. The Egyptian government is also a funding partner.

Rapid response

The Centre for High Performance Computing, on the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research campus in Cape Town, has the capability to download information in the seven seconds it takes for a satellite to pass over Africa.

In addition to the Blue Gene, the centre also has a 27-teraflop Sun Microsystems supercomputer, powered by a Sun Enterprise M9000 server and running on open-source software.

The Aswan-based receiving station run by Narss receives data for Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe. Narss's activities include studies on natural resource management, aerial photography, and the application of satellite data in projects relating to environmental studies, geological surveys, mineral exploration, soil classification, and planning of tourist projects, among others.