About
Overview
The Asia-Oceania region with its large population, numerous and fast environmental changes and frequent natural disasters pose a big challenge to the AO society. Complex geography, earthquakes and tsunamis, floods and droughts, environment deterioration and pollution, global warming and island losing, and mountain ecosystem degradation endanger the security of water, food, energy, health and ecosystem services. To confront these challenges, there is a demand to foster its application capacity and to develop an integrated, sharable, and sustained observation system. To develop such capacity, it is necessary to promote a regional cooperation on earth observation with broad involvement. Responding to these needs, GEOSS Asia Pacific Symposium has convened annually since 2007 and has strongly demonstrated the importance of fostering a forum for regional activities. On the foundation of these existing regional efforts, the Asia-Oceania GEOSS Initiative (hereinafter to be referred as AOGEOSS) attaches importance to comprehensive Earth observation application throughout the Asia-Oceania region. Through establishing the effective cooperation framework at regional, national, and global levels, the AOGEOSS initiative intends to promote the ability of AO countries to confront those challenges which pose a risk to the attainment of social sustainable development.
The AOGEOSS initiative will engage participants and stakeholders in Asia-Oceania region, and coordinate the observation infrastructure, leveraging the existing cooperation and conducting joint projects under the AO Caucus mechanism of intergovernmental GEO. Based on the several priorities in the AO regions, the dedicated AOGEOSS is specified into two categories: (1) The regional applications and services and (2) The foundational tasks.
To achieve the three Strategic Objectives of GEO, the AOGEOSS will rely on the two key functions of the previously established and very successful GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium as a forum that provides a regional communication and exchange platform, suitable for promoting discussion and information exchange on (i) cooperation on specific initiatives and (ii) as a scientific and technical workshop on each thematic area related to the Societal Benefit Areas.
Activities for the period
The actions will be conducted in regional applications and foundational tasks.
- Regional application activities:
The initiative will propose new regional applications including Monitoring and evaluation of drought in Asia-Oceania region, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, Ocean and Island monitoring, and Himalayan GEOSS. At the same time, it will also foster the existing activities such as Asia-Pacific Biodiversity Observation Network (AP-BON), Asian Rice Crop Estimation and monitoring (Asia-RICE), Asian Water Cycle Initiative (AWCI), Ocean and Society, GEO Carbon and GHG Initiative. - Foundational tasks:
The initiative will implement data sharing, AO-DataCube and user engagement and communication.
User engagement
Involvement strategy is mainly relying on the communication activities at different platform, such as conference, side events, and related activities conducted by different consortiums. The GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium is one of the explicit platforms, which could provide a flexible and inclusive convening platform for end-users at different level, also playing a critical role for the user engagement and capacity building. AOGEOSS also focus on its capacity building to foster the user’s engagement through the existing activities.
Future plans
- AOGEOSS initiative will implement prototype information services, build the regional data sharing platform, and deliver annually report on Remote Sensing Monitoring of Ecosystem and Environment over Asia-Oceania. AOGEOSS Initiative will also demonstrate technical feasibilities through pilot projects and operational application services;
- As an integral part of implementing GEOSS, AOGEOSS will coordinate various resources including observations, technologies and applications, to deliver information services for end-users and facilitate the development of society and economy of Asia and Oceania;
- A key goal of AOGEOSS, it is to promote further cooperation among countries of Asia-Oceania region. It will promote deeper understanding for international communities on earth observation system and a wide range of applications on some important topics.
Resources
In-kind:
- Satellite data and its services, hosting the training programmes, will be provided by member countries through their space agency and institutes. China, Japan, India, Korea and Thailand have successfully launched a series of satellites;
- The annual GEOSS Asia-Pacific Symposium will be voluntarily borne in an in-kind manner by Japan as previously.
Other:
- Most member countries have expressed to invest special and/or in-kind resource on a voluntary basis for the task and subtask they are involved;
- Project funded by China MOST with USD 500,000 annually for Ecosystem and Environment Monitoring Report;
- China RADI invested USD 350,000 for China GEOSS Data Sharing Platform maintaining every year;
- Funding and projects for each task will be allocated by member countries after the approval of this proposal.
Leadership
- Xingfa Gu (RADI/CAS/China), guxingfa@radi.ac.cn
- David Hudson (Geosciences Australia), David.Hudson@ga.gov.au
- Toshio Koike (The University of Tokyo/Japan), tkoike@hydra.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Contributors
Members: Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, South Korea.
Participating Organizations: CEOS, GRSS, ICIMOD, ICSU, ISDE, ISPRS, POGO, UNEP-IEMP, UNESCAP, UNESCO-HIST, WMO.
Others: Laos.
Linkages across the Work Programme
Flagships: GEO BON (AP-BON); GEOGLAM (Asia-RiCE); GFOI.
Initiatives: GEO Carbon and GHG Initiative; Oceans and Society: Blue Planet.
Community Activities: Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS).
