The seventeenth annual report of the International Charter is now available, and describes the Charter's activities throughout 2017.

The Charter was activated 44 times in 2017, covering disasters in 30 countries. Between other activations, the Charter was triggered for the major earthquake in Iran and Iraq on 12 November 2017, for Hurricane Irma in Haiti, Dominican Republic, USA and the British Virgin Islands / Anguilla (in total 4 activations) in early September 2017 and for Hurricane Maria in Dominica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico / US Virgin Islands and Martinique / Guadeloupe (in total 4 activations) in mid-September 2017.

The United Arab Emirates Space Agency (UAESA) became the 17th member of the Charter. The Charter conducted the official signature ceremony after the reporting period during the 39th Board meeting in Darmstadt, Germany on 19 April 2018.

The Universal Access initiative is progressing, and expanded the network of Authorised Users reaching a total of 67 user organisations in 58 countries and the European Commission in 2017.

The Charter also continued its collaboration with the CEOS Working Group on Disasters to allow CEOS Pilot teams to access Charter data in order to support their research, once an activation is closed.

The new web-based Charter Operational System (COS-2) is operational since March 2015 and it has been used successfully in all Charter calls. Furthermore, since September 2017, COS-2 can automatically record metrics and information that is necessary in order to generate system performance statistics.