Flash Talks

As GEO approaches its third decade of work, a major emphasis will be on establishing strong sustainable value chains providing co-designed Earth insights, knowledge and intelligence for policy and decision-making. This flash talk we will illustrate this at European, African and global scale connecting the information flow, users and stakeholders at various stages of the value chain. It will underline the value of individual contributions but also stress the cumulative benefit for having strong traceable value chains for information and stakeholders. The intervention will also demonstrate the intentional transition from research to sustained operations in delivering services for policy.

Sven Gilliams (VITO)

Due to the wide variety of landscape dynamics, crop types, growing seasons and agricultural management practices, mapping of cropland extent, crop types and irrigation practices at the global scale still remain very challenging tasks. Several attempts have already been made to come up with accurate global maps, but until now not one has succeeded in providing seasonal information at field level on a global scale. Current crop map layers either lack spatial detail or fail to provide regular updates. As such, the AFOLU / Climate community is still in need of a system that can provide seasonal global agricultural monitoring information at field level. For this reason, the European Space Agency, in collaboration with stakeholders in global agriculture like GEOGLAM, FAO, AMIS, has initiated the WorldCereal project to demonstrate the feasibility of producing seasonal update cropland and crop type maps based on open and free data.

This flash talk will introduce the objective, research contents, working networks, activities, potential impact of initiative of attainable yield gap in Africa. In particular, a long-term crop production and yield datasets generated using machine learning algorithms by integrating statistical data, agroclimatic and agronomic information from CropWatch and remote sensing products will be presented and shared in the flash talk

CREDIBLE is setting up and moderating a network of activities for favoring discussions on methodology standardisation in soil carbon accounting. EARSC is responsible for pushing forward the discussions on how earth observation is contributing to carbon removals (MRV) and is expected to evolve policy making and business innovation engagement toward its end

Hakki Emrah Erdogan (EC Joint Research Center - JRC)

This flash talk employs the EU Common Agricultural Policy’s Checks-by-Monitoring (CbM) to demonstrate near real-time measuring, reporting, and validating (MRV) at the field level. The CbM uses open access Copernicus Sentinel satellite data and other data sources to detect agricultural activities on the areas under the all EU area payments in an automated and continuous process. In analysing land-based subsidy eligibility and effectiveness, the CbM solution using AI/ML algorithms is effective and cost-efficient. The use of MRV instruments by policymakers and decision-makers to advance policy goals. The CbM provides a rigorous approach for monitoring green agriculture policy and funding in near real time as calls for SDG goals resurface and climate change impacts become visible.

In monitoring climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, EO data plays a crucial role. Over the past decades the increase of availability of EO data, AI and cloud infrastructure has opened up EO use at global scale across different domains and institutes (public and privat). However, in situ data to train and validate the models is still lacking. Within the EU e-shape project an approach to collect agricultural in situ data has been developed in coordination with the GEOGLAM in situ data working group. This approach could be valuable for other GEO-communities and flagships and a start of a large in situ data infrastructure.

Jose Rubio Miguel for Alba Brobia (Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre - CREAF)

In-situ data are very relevant to cover critical needs such as calibration and validation of remote sensing-based products, input assessment for numerical modeling, provision of a commercial service or estimation of a policy monitoring indicator among others. Depending on the need there will be requirements for in-situ data that can be formally expressed as variable needed (e.g. a Essential Variable), thematic uncertainty, positional accuracy, temporal coverage and frequency, representative radius, coordinate measurements, etc. This flash talk exposes the rational for a GEO in-situ data requirements database and proposes a new FAIR GEO component that helps manage in-situ data requirements from GEO activities. It facilitates the requirements gathering process with a set of guiding questions and allows for querying the requirements database to get a comprehensive view of what is needed by the GEO community. It will also allow understanding whether there are similar requirements across different GEO activities, fostering in-situ data reusability, guiding the priorities to look for new data providers, facilitating the identification of and interaction with key in situ data providers.

Bente Lilja Bye (BLB), Piotr Zaborowski (OGC), Marie-Francoise Voidrot (OGC)

The Side event aims at providing an update on Digital Twins (DT), their interoperability and how they enable value creation Digital replicas of the Earth are promising more accurate, timely and usable models of the physical environmental phenomena. Efforts embrace significant investments in the governed and federated activities to build DT infrastructure, data mesh and decision support services. Multidisciplinary ambition of the digital twins need to handle various perspectives of the users and properly define the domain knowledge spaces using multiple data sources. With the foreseen massive amount of information sourced by multiple initiatives with various models, technical, ethical, economic challenges of the EO services strikes with increased force. The questions of the derived information and models trustworthiness, reliability and usefulness in real-life scenarios, data curation, quality assurance, sharing, ecosystem openness for community contributions, data producers rights and data sovereignty. Undefined responsibilities over the AI generated knowledge, with the promise of actionable information and informed decisions may require yet better understanding of the common practice of the knowledge generation with outcomes validation, transparent verification.

Andreas Matheus for Joan Maso (Ecological and Forestry Applications Research Centre - CREAF)

The urgency in addressing the triple planetary crisis requires the collaboration of all actors, including citizens. Citizens can not only collect data but also monitor policies and influence decisions. An example of monitoring SDGs is the use of marine plastic litter citizen science data into the official monitoring and reporting of the SDG indicator 14.1.1b on plastic debris density in Ghana. However, most of the time data collection is limited in space and the geographical coverage being too small to address global issues. There is a need to aggregate Citizen Science data collections to generate comprehensive datasets that can be useful for tackling global problems. This flash talk presents some examples where citizen science data from several initiatives, sometimes ‘armed’ with low cost sensors, can be harmonized, quality controlled and aggregated into larger datasets.

On February 6, 2023, 7.8-magnitude and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes hit Turkey successively, causing heavy losses of lives and property in Turkey and Syria. This flashtalk will introduce how the research team at Wuhan University, under the framework of GEO pilot initiative called the Night-time light remote sensing for sustainable development goals (NIGHT-LIGHT), collaborated with the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) as well as other institutes to conduct power loss and recovery evaluation of the earthquake through night-time light remote sensing. The presenter will introduce how this activity was organized under international collaboration including organizing satellite task, obtaining data, generating products and disseminating products while also describing the techniques behind the mapping work.

This flash talk will introduce a set of urban-scale indicators developed in support of the EU’s climate adaptation strategy. These indicators have been created as part of the EuroGEO initiative coordinated by EEA and leverage open in-situ data and pan-European statistics. They cover various aspects related to climate adaptation in urban areas, including urban biodiversity assessment, cultural heritage vulnerability evaluation, building energy performance analysis, and urban ventilation estimation. These indicators are designed to provide crucial information for decision-makers, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in climate adaptation efforts within European cities. The initiative underscores the importance of data sharing and management to address climate adaptation as a top international policy priority.

Swadhin Behera (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology), Erik Mabunda (Tzaneen Malaria Center, South Africa ), Neville Sweijd (Alliance for Collaboration on Climate and Earth Systems Science, South Africa)

This Flashtalk presents the Malaria Infection Prediction Early Warning System, established and implemented by the local authority in South Africa, and highlights its significant research value and practical applications. As featured in this year’s GEO Highlight Report, a GEO Initiative called DIAS has the system that synergize climate prediction in an AI and Machine Learning-based malaria model, earth observation data, and malaria patient count information. The data integration yields prediction of malaria transmission and patient count 3-4 months in advance with high accuracy. The EO solution has been helping the local health organizations and local municipalities, including the Department of Health in Limpopo and Tzaneen Malaria Center, to take early actions to prevent malaria outbreaks, such as development of strategic action plans, including multiple insecticide sprays, with the aim of 100% coverage in most districts of Limpopo. The results of this work have shown a substantial reduction in the impact of malaria risk and malaria-related morbidity on a population of 6.5 million people in Limpopo.

Digital Earth Africa, will share information about the six projects that were supported in addressing food security, water resources, urbanisation, climate change and natural resource management. DE Africa provided technical support to the participants by providing access to the DE Africa platform and algorithms. DE Africa platform and services enable African governments, industry and decision makers to track changes across the continent in unprecedented detail.

Jasper Slingsby (University of Cape Town)

BioSCape (www.bioscape.io) is NASA’s first ever biodiversity-focused integrated field and airborne remote sensing campaign and involves over 150 scientists from the US, South Africa and other countries. The primary objective is to understand the structure, function, and composition of the region’s ecosystems, and to learn about how and why they are changing in time and space.

During this Flash Talk we will announce the release of, and introduce “Digital Earth Africa water bodies”, a new, EO based continental scale operational service. In 2021 DE Africa launched the continental Water Observations from Space service, which allows users to understand the location and persistence of water presence across the African landscape. Whilst this information provides valuable insights into surface water dynamics over the past two to three decades, further analysis is required in order to make the information more accessible to decision makers. The DE Africa water bodies service addresses this need, by building on the presence/absence information provided by the WOfS service, to enable users to analyze water dynamics within individual water bodies and discrete areas. Designed to support users across the continent to monitor and take action for water security, the new water bodies products contribute to the DE Africa portfolio of continental scale operational services which support data driven decision making for climate action including ecosystems and biodiversity, health, disaster risk reduction, urban development, oceans and coastal areas, and water and agriculture.

This flashtalk highlights the work of a dedicated member of the GEO Work Programme Initiative at the Geohazard Supersites and Natural Laboratory (GSNL). Charles Balagizi, GSNL Supersite Coordinator at Goma Volcano Observatory in the Democratic Republic of Congo gathers crucial earth observations on volcanic activities and water pollution, shedding light on the pressing environmental challenges faced by the region. Discover the impact of his groundbreaking work whose courageous efforts are recently featured in the science journal, Nature

The products routinely produced by the global component of the Copernicus Land Service are supporting the monitoring of several SDG indicators and the implementation of these. The global component of the Copernicus Land Service systematically produces a series of qualified bio-geophysical products on the status and evolution of the land surface, at global scale and at mid to low spatial resolution, complemented by the constitution of long term time series. A newly development dashboard allows for easy visualization and analysis and demonstrates the use and application of these global datasets for SDG monitoring among others. At local scale the Copernicus Hot Spot Monitoring activity is providing detailed land information on specific areas of interest, answering to ad-hoc requests. It concentrates mainly on the domain of the sustainable management of natural resources, with a focus on Protected Areas and Key Landscapes for Conservation. The activity is directly supporting field projects and policies developed by the EU in the framework of EU international policy interests.

Wade Larson (EarthDaily Analytics Corp.)

Scheduled for June and October 2024 launches, the EarthDaily Constellation comprises 10 superspectral optical satellites that are designed to image the entire planet every day (excluding Antarctica). These wide-swath (240 km) satellites will cover ~100% of Earth’s landmass and crucial maritime areas, in 22 spectral bands and with a 5-meter Ground Sample Distance (GSD) in the VNIR bands. The EarthDaily constellation will be the world’s first global superspectral imaging system, sharing several spectral bands with Sentinel-2 and Landsat missions. Developed over eight years, the EarthPipeline is our cloud-native processing system that transforms raw satellite data into high-quality Analysis Ready Data (ARD) of rigorous scientific quality and reliability, and continuously cross calibrated with the best scientific missions. Weighing 215 kg, the satellites have a 10-year design life; they have been in development since September 2021. The constellation will support a wide range of machine-learning and artificial intelligence-ready applications. It offers unprecedented data for monitoring environmental parameters. By digitizing the planet every day, the EarthDaily constellation will support strategic priorities in environment and climate change monitoring, food security, disaster response, biomass carbon measurement, water protection, wildfire monitoring, and resource management—Earth Intelligence for All in humanity’s concerted effort to address the Triple Planetary Crises.