Brussels, 14/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - On 10 November, the Commission adopted a communication identifying the first three services which the "Global Monitoring for Environment and Security" system (GMES) may propose in 2008, after a pilot operational phase. GMES will gather data on pollution, floods, forest fires and earthquakes and thus anticipate natural disasters help to predict a natural disasters and improve the management of crisis situations. The first three Earth observation services will focus on the management of emergency situations (the prevention of crises related to disasters with natural or human causes), soil monitoring (relating to the use and coverage of soils in several areas at local, national and European level) and marine monitoring (on the state of the ocean). A GMES structure will be put into place within the Commission to manage the system and to ensure that the pilot phase of these three services goes according to plan. A total of 11 initial services, which have already been selected, will then be phased in. "The GMES system will improve our capacity to respond to natural disasters and at the same time, improve the competitiveness of European businesses specialising in the space sector", said Commissioner Günter Verheugen in a press release.