Workshops and Technical Meetings (self-organized)

José Rubio (European Environment Agency - EEA), Angelica Gutierrez (NOAA), GU Xingfa (IRSA, Chinese Academy of Science), Michael Otieno (Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), Jean Dusart (European Commission), Josh Delmonico (USGS FGDC), Rich Frazier (FGDC), Brian Goldin (USGeo/amerigeo/Voyager Search), Kofi Asare (Ghana Space Agency), LIU Chuang (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences), Hiroyuki Muraoka (Gifu University, Japan GEO), Antje Hecheltjen (GEO-LDN), Lionel Menard (MINES Paris PSL)

The workshop proposed will be co-organised between the Regional GEOs and the Data Working Group – In Situ Subgroup, with the objective of discussing the current status of in situ data sharing, the progress over the last years and the perspectives in view of the GEO Post 2025. The session will be focused on sharing experiences from the different GEO regions, highlighting challenges, gaps and barriers, as well as showcasing good practices in view of replicating successes across regions. The session should also serve to discuss the role of Regional GEOs in the in situ context in view of GEO Post 2025 preparations. The session will be structured in two parts. The first part, “Enabling openness” will focus on policies enabling open data in the different regional GEOs and will discuss how the Data Sharing Principles can be further implemented by the GEO Members and POs in order to open up more in situ data. The second part on “Enabling infrastructure” will focus on the technical challenges and opportunities, including experiences from GEO initiatives and the discussion of role of the GEO infrastructure in facilitating access to in situ data across GEO.

Irene Benito (Planet Labs), Ashutosh Limaye (NASA Servir), Foster Mensah (Centre for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services)

Although climate change and biodiversity decline are global challenges, responses from countries across the world are often very different. Earth Observation (EO) provides global, transparent, and harmonized visibility of the whole planet, and this positions the technology uniquely to support governments respond to common challenges. This session will particularly look at the role of EO in sustainable supply chain regulations, which are gaining traction in the Global North and will have enormous impact in exporting countries from the Global South. During the workshop, we will use as a case study the recently approved Deforestation Regulation of the European Union. Relying on EO as the main tool to prove compliance, this regulation will ban the sale in Europe of seven deforestation risk commodities if their production has caused deforestation. The regulation is the first of its kind, but other countries are expected to follow suit. During the workshop, we will bring together policy makers form the Global South and North, with space experts to discuss needs and identify areas of collaboration to support compliance as well as to empower exporting nations to transition to more sustainable economic models.

Julia Nerantzia Tzortzi (HARMONIA), Mikko Strahlendorff (Finnish Meteorological Institute - FMI), Yifang Ban (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Betty Charalampopoulou (Geosystems Hellas SA), Nektarios Chrysoulakis (Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas - FORTH), Ioannis Kavouras (ICCS, HARMONIA IRAP)

The HARMONIA project is a European initiative focused on developing a resilience assessment platform to assist urban stakeholders in comprehending and quantifying the impacts of climate change. This platform, based on satellite and auxiliary data, aims to provide a user-friendly knowledge base offering detailed information at the local neighborhood and street levels. It is designed to support local decision-making and enable various climate adaptation and mitigation applications, including Carbon Capture and Storage technologies. During this workshop cities and experts involved in HARMONIA will share their experiences and set the stage for discussions on urban resilience and climate adaptation at a global scale. The workshop will also feature presentations of key project outcomes, including a Web-Based Decision Support Tool and an Integrated Resilience Assessment Platform, developed in collaboration with European cities, to illustrate how these tools support cities in achieving their climate adaptation objectives.

Sara Venturini (GEO Secretariat), Mark Dowell (GEO Climate Change-WG co-chair), Juli Trtanj (NOAA), Evangelos Gerasopoulos (RCHS-WG), Sousan Torabiparizi (UNFCCC Secretariat), Nancy Searby (GEO DRR-WG co-chair), Nathaniel Newlands (GEO DRR-WG co-chair), Virginia Burkett (GEO Climate Change-WG co-chair), Kene Onukwube (GEO DRR-WG co-chair), Charles Balagizi (Goma Volcano Observatory), David Borges (GEO DRR-WG co-chair), Allison Craddock (GEO Capacity Building WG co-chair), Angel Valdiviezo (GEO Climate Change WG co-chair)

At the 26th GEO Programme Board (PB) Meeting in June 2023, the continuation of five GEO Working Groups (WGs) was endorsed with flexible arrangements that are based on the needs of the GEO Work Programme activities and the broader policy landscape within which they operate. A joint Terms of Reference (ToR) of the WGs is to be revised for the PB approval to align with the post-2025 GEO strategy. Accordingly, the GEO WGs are tasked to coordinate annual workplans, identifying concrete outputs, as well as resource implications and leads among Co-chairs and members. In response to this PB decision, this workshop brings together members of the GEO Working Groups on Climate Change (CC), Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Data, Capacity Building and Resilient Cities and Human Settlements (RCHS) to coordinate and create synergies across them with following two objectives: 1. Present draft joint TOR; 2. Take stock, discuss and agree on joint tasks and deliverables. The workshop will provide an overview of current progress and discuss options for thematic collaboration and potential joint deliverables to be co-designed with GEO members, POs, GEO Work Programme activities, and Regional GEOs.

Thierry Ranchin (Mines Paris), Erwin Goor (European Research Agency - REA), Franz Immler (European Commission), Jean Dusart (European Commission), Pascal Le Masson (Mines Paris), Marie-Françoise Voidrot (Open Geospatial Consortium - OGC)

The preparation of the post-2025 GEO is a great challenge for the GEO community. In preparation of the Post 2025, EuroGEO is evolving and is engaging further into GEO and support initiatives that generate added-value towards their policy goals, provide long-term perspective on integrating observing systems and sustained services building on the networks established by the regional GEOs. After the presentation of EuroGEO’s coming evolution, the workshop provides a place to discuss the state of play of Africa-Europe relations, the collaboration and capacity building activities between EuroGEO and AfriGEO, with South African stakeholders.

Liping Di (George Mason University), Jiali Shang (Agricultural and Agri-Food Canada), Liying Guo (George Mason University), Faisal Mueen Qamer (International Center for Integrated Mountain Development), Feng Gao (USDA Agricultural Research Service), Mark Noort (HCP International)

Agriculture is the foundation of human civilization. It not only secures vital food and fiber supplies for the world but also recently has become one of the critical sources of renewable bioenergy. However, climate change has imposed adversary efforts on agriculture. Meanwhile, agriculture is one of the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, further accelerating the climate change. The climate-smart agriculture has the goal of sustaining and enhancing agricultural productivity while adapting and resiling to climate change, reducing the GHG emissions, and increasing the GHG sequestration. Sound decision making on agricultural activities is one of keys for reaching the goal of climate-smart agriculture. Studies showed science-based, data-driven, informed decision-making, which relies on timely and accurate information on current and predicted future conditions of crop, environment, and market to make optimal decisions, can greatly help us reaching climate-smart agriculture goal. Earth observation (EO) plays a key role in the climate-smart agricultural decision making since it can provide the timely and accurate decision-ready information for climate-smart agriculture. This session will invite experts to present latest advances on EO data-driven informed decision making for climate-smart agriculture, including water use and auditing. The following topics will be covered: irrigation decision making, smart cropping decision making, crop condition monitoring and yield prediction, in-season rice mapping, smart phone apps for ground truthing, and the use of improved weather and rainfall information to determine irrigated water use with the help of EO, automated detection of irrigated land the estimation of the (changes in) volume of farm dams.