Germany

Germany continues to support GEO and its objectives with manifold contributions. Germany also strongly supports Copernicus, the European Union’s civil Earth Observation programme, which forms an important pillar of the free and open world of Earth Observation with its Sentinel satellites and services.

In 2023, remarkable developments include:

Germany hosts – through its International Cooperation Agency GIZ – the Secretariat of the GEO Land Degradation Neutrality Initiative (GEO-LDN). Following the upgrading of GEO-LDN to GEO’s 5th flagship initiative at the GEO Plenary in Accra in 2022, UNCCD and GIZ, together with many partners, pool their strengths to support countries in reporting on SDG Indicator 15.3.1 and making land use planning more sustainable, evidence-based and transparent – with the ultimate goal of preserving land for people with the help of Earth Observation data.

In 2023, the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture continued its support for GEOGLAM, GEO’s Global Agricultural Monitoring flagship initiative. Over the last three years, this grant, worth approx. 800.000 EUR, played an important role to support the GEOGLAM programme coordination.

In early 2023, a project office for the research and development component of the Global Forest Observation Initiative (GFOI), one of GEO’s Flagship initiatives, started its work at the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) with funding from the European Space Agency (ESA). The objective of the office is to coordinate R&D activities to fill knowledge gaps, align the work of the research community with country needs, and enable continuous improvements in the use of Earth Observation for Forest monitoring consistent with requirements of UNFCCC and international reporting.

The Global Geodetic Centre of Excellence (GGCE) has been established at the UN-Campus in Bonn/Germany and started to operate in early 2023. The GGCE is going to provide important contributions to a UN Member State agreed worldwide geodetic infrastructure. This infrastructure is the reliable long-term foundation for applications like satellite navigation, space-borne Earth observation and the monitoring of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) is an international geodetic reference as operator of geodetic observatories on three continents and will support the work of the GGCE with its expertise. Germany – through BKG – contributes to the success of the GGCE by providing the necessary financial means to establish and start the GGCE.

The German Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) hosts three hydrological World Data Centres. Established in 1988, the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) has been serving for 35 years successfully as a facilitator between the producers of hydrologic data and the international research community. GRDC data is part of the WMO Catalogue for Climate Data and has been included in WMO’s State of Global Water Resources report since 2021. The UNEP GEMS/Water Data Centre (GWDC) is actively contributing to the GEO AquaWatch initiative and supporting the standardization and harmonization of water quality data exchange from in-situ and remote sensing observations through OGC and WMO with the ambition to develop Member States’ reporting capacities and integrate their data into the global observing systems of UNEP (GEMS/Water), WMO (WHOS) and GEO (GEOSS). The International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) operations have been taken over by Germany – through BfG – in 2022 with the goal of securing it as a sustained service. ISMN is an international cooperation to establish and maintain a global in-situ soil moisture database. This database is an essential means for validating and improving global satellite products as well as land surface, climate, and hydrological models.

The Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) carries out several development cooperation projects with African, Latin American and Asian partner countries. Many different, mainly freely available satellite data (e.g. Copernicus, Landsat), digital elevation models and geological survey data are used in these projects. Concerning EO data aspects the cooperation with the Geological Survey of Bangladesh (GSB) “Geo-Information for Urban Planning and Adaptation to Climate Change” linking e.g. land-use with inundation data and this way supporting planning agencies in pilot cities was successfully completed. The regional capacity enhancement for geothermal exploration in several countries of SICA ("Central America Integration System") acting as political partner is currently being continued with in-depth training and applications.

Global urban development and health risks from climate change and air pollution can be assessed using the German Aerospace Center (DLR) services ‘World Settlement Footprint’ and ‘Atmospheric Composition Monitoring’ as provided as part of DLR Earth Observation Center Geoservices. To develop healthy and climate-resilient cities these satellite-based products need to be combined with Urban Climate Models, like PALM-4U, to assess the urban environment under current and future climate conditions and mobility scenarios. Following a rigorous co-design process, DLR develops user-driven services for assessing multiple urban health risks.