GEO Human Planet

Understanding the characteristics of human settlements—where people live and work, their population size, demographics, and physical environment—is essential for addressing climate action, disaster risk reduction, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and enhancing urban resilience. Crucially, vast amounts of open geospatial data must be transformed into actionable intelligence to guide policymaking through value-added insights. The focus must shift from merely mapping human settlements to fully characterizing them, capturing their social, economic, and environmental dimensions to enable more effective and sustainable interventions for cities and communities.

GEO Human Planet is a global effort dedicated to understanding human presence and the complex relationships of human activities on planet Earth. By leveraging advanced Earth observation (EO) data, geospatial data and statistics, the initiative provides crucial information, knowledge, and intelligence for policy support to a variety of stakeholders and GEO endeavors in several multi-sectoral thematic areas across the three Planetary Crises domains.

As international organizations begin to focus on the post-2030 development agenda, EO is emerging as a critical source of information. Our partnership is at the forefront of utilizing EO data to inform and guide future policies and actions.

GEO Human Planet intends to close data gaps in the field of human settlement knowledge. The GEO Human Planet data contributes to addressing SDGs and international frameworks, reducing loss of lives and livelihoods with improved risk knowledge and more disaggregated geospatial data on socioeconomic phenomena. In parallel, information and knowledge generated in the initiative are transferred to policymakers at various levels through the Atlas of the Human Planet series for evidence-based decision-making, closing the loop between information and intelligence. As part of the impact, a stronger integration of GEO Human Planet into the GEO website and GEO Knowledge Hub will improve the visibility of the products.

The GEO Human Planet sets the objectives to reinforce the partnership and network among its stakeholders of global EO and geospatial data producers and users, co-create data and knowledge, and contribute to the 2030 Development Agenda and its evolution.

Through the Human Planet, various stakeholders collaborate for the production and exploitation of new open information systems and databases on global human settlements:

GHP will use this new Work Programme cycle to test the requirements, address policy needs, and prototype the evolution in the R2O pipeline.

GEO Human Planet is managed by two co-chairs, supported by coordinators. Specific activities, such as the Human Planet Forum, are steered by task teams composed of partners and contributors. Products are implemented by the partner organizations in coordination with the co-chairs. Human Planet members contribute to GEO Work Programme activities, such as Working Groups, Initiatives, and Flagships. Periodic calls are organized at management and working levels.

GEO Human Planet will continue to drive synergies with other GEO Work Programme activities, fostering collaboration and innovation. Some examples include: