GEO European Projects Workshop ReportGEO European Projects Workshop Report 3-4 September 2008 Brussels, Belgium 2008 Directorate-General for Research – Environment EUR 23603 EN EUROPEAN

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GEO European Projects Workshop Repor t

GEO European Projects Workshop Report

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3-4 September 2008Brussels, Belgium

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GEO European Projects Workshop Report

3-4 September 2008Brussels, Belgium

2008 Directorate-General for Research – Environment EUR 23603 EN

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FOREWORD..............................................................................................................................................................5

AGENDA OF THE GEO EUROPEAN PROJECTS WORKSHOP .........................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................................7

PRESENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION PROGRAMMES RELEVANT TO EARTH OBSERVATION ...................9

The Joint Research Centre Directorate-General .......................................................................................................9

Information Society & Media Directorate-General ....................................................................................................9

Enterprise Directorate-General – GMES Bureau ......................................................................................................9

Research Directorate-General ..............................................................................................................................10

Development Directorate-General ........................................................................................................................11

GEO WORK PLAN 2009-2011 .................................................................................................................................13

Presentation of GEO and latest news ...................................................................................................................13

Presentation of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 Version 2 .....................................................................................13

Outcome of the Brainstorming Sessions – General ...............................................................................................14

GEOSS Transverse Tasks ....................................................................................................................................16

Societal Benefit Areas Tasks ...............................................................................................................................18

Compendium of Recommendations .....................................................................................................................20

EC PROJECTS SYNERGIES AND COORDINATION .....................................................................................................23

Collaboration between EC projects ......................................................................................................................23

How can we optimise the benefit to the projects and the contribution to GEO .........................................................23

The European GEO family of projects: Coordination and way forward ......................................................................24

Compendium of Recommendations .....................................................................................................................25

CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................................................................27

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ..............................................................................................................................................29

PROJECTS ACRONYMS ..........................................................................................................................................31

ANNEX 1: PARTICIPANTS LIST .................................................................................................................................32

ANNEX 2: GEO 2009-2011 WORK PLAN VERSION 2 – LIST OF TASKS .........................................................................33

ANNEX 3: POSTER SESSION ....................................................................................................................................35

TABLE OF CONTENT

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The first GEO European Projects Workshop was organised by the European Commission (EC) on 3 and 4 September 2008 in Brussels.

The Workshop raised a lot of interest amongst the European Earth Observation (EO) Community. More than eighty attendees had been invited. In particular, forty EC projects were represent-ed and whilst this is still a subset of all projects currently financed by the European Community and concerned with Earth Observation, it was a very large and representative sample of a broad range of scientific communities covering all areas of the GEOSS.

The European Organisations, who collaborate with the EC throughout the year providing ideas, decisions and suggestions at the GEO European High Level Working Group (HLWG) meet-ings, or directly at the GEO Committees meetings, actively participated in the Workshop. This includes ESA, Eumetsat, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), EuroGeosurveys and the EEA.

Various European Commission Directorates have also collabo-rated in the Workshop to provide a complete and unified picture of the Commission’s support to European Earth Observation activities: DG Enterprise with the GMES Bureau, DG Information Society, DG Development, DG Environment, the Joint Research Centre and DG Research Environment Directorate.

The organisation of the Workshop represented a first attempt to better organise the collaboration between various EU con-tributors to GEO. This was in line with repeated requests from the GEO HLWG to develop a European approach to GEO that would take account of the diversity of the EU activities: GMES, INSPIRE, Earth Observation R&D activities, and development activities. Efforts in support of this aim have already been ini-tiated, with the Workshop representing a catalyser to a more structured and effective coordination.

It is my pleasure to recognise that the output of the Workshop has clearly met the initial goals. The conclusions of the Work-shop provide recommendations along two main lines:

1. The enhancement of coordination between the European Commission initiatives and the benefit of their interacting with GEOSS.

2. The identification of strategic activities within the future GEO Work Plan enabling an improved participation of Europe within GEO.

As concerns the synergy between European actions, it is worth noting that the Workshop clearly identified several areas which are key to the development of GEOSS. Existing projects in these areas have indicated that they plan now to collaborate better in order to contribute to and benefit from GEOSS. It is particularly

the case for projects dealing with information systems necessary for uploading and downloading observation data at global level and to make such data more interoperable and accessible.

With regards to the GEO Work Plan for 2009-2011, it is very encouraging to note the willingness of the European EO projects to actively participate in many of the tasks described in this new Work Plan. Putting these European activities at the heart of the work carried out by the various GEO tasks will enhance Europe’s collaboration within GEO and strengthen the imple-mentation of the GEOSS. Many potential collaborations within specific Social Benefit Areas of GEO have been identified, includ-ing, for example, the domain of Climate, where European FP7 projects can strongly support the domain of Observing Systems for Carbon.

We will incorporate those important inputs gathered during the Workshop in the European Commission’s response to the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan proposals.

We also see the Workshop Report as an opportunity to reinforce the commitment of the European Commission to GEO. The suc-cessful accomplishment of the GEOSS 10-year Implementation Plan requires productive cooperation within Europe, as well as between Europe and the rest of the world. The Commission’s Programmes, (FP7, eContentPlus, Development funds, and other Programmes) are good tools to that effect.

The Commission will look at the actions that can be taken to try and build upon this Workshop. We will endeavour to put in place mechanisms that can help to maintain and further strengthen the co-operation between European projects in the domain of Earth Observation and the contribution that they can make to the GEO and the implementation of the GEOSS. In particular we envisage holding a regular annual follow-up of this first Workshop in order to contribute to building up a ‘European GEO family’ of stakeholders involved in GEO initiatives. Through the European Community’s RTD Framework Programme, we will also look to support a major GEO event involving the main European Organisations dealing with Earth Observation in order to raise the political profile of GEO in Europe.

It is with these words and looking forward towards the future, that I want to sincerely thank all participants for their enthusi-asm, interest, contribution, and for the strong encouragements to pursue and build upon this first GEO European Projects Workshop.

Manuela SoaresDirector Environment

European Commission, Directorate-General for Research

FOREWORD

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Day 1 – Wednesday September 3rd, 2008

Welcome Addressby Manuela Soares, Director, Dir I, EC DG Research

Morning Sessionchaired by Gilles Ollier, DG RTD

Presentation of GEO and latest newsby Alan Edwards, DG RTD

The GEO Work Plan 2009-2011by Alexia Massacand, GEO Secretariat

Presentations of the European Commission Programmes relevant to Earth Observation

• Francesco Pignatelli, DG JRC – Joint Research Center activities relevant for Earth Observation

• Michel Schouppe, DG INFSO – Update on GEO related programmes managed by DG INFSO

• Josiane Masson, GMES Bureau, DG ENTR – GMES and GEO hand in hand

• Gilles Ollier, DG RTD – Earth Observation under the FP7 Environment Theme

• Harry De Backer, DG DEV – DG Dev Earth Observation related activities

Poster session during Lunch and Pauses

Review of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011: Parallel Brainstorming Sessions

• Session 1: Transverse GEOSS tasks Chair: Ariana Nastaseanu Rapporteur: Pascal Le Grand Moderator: Udo Gaërtner

• Session 2: Societal Benefit Areas tasks: Weather Chair: Alan Edwards Rapporteur: Vojko Bratina

• Session 2a: Climate, Energy, Disasters, Health Moderators: Philippe Ciais, Stuart Marsh

• Session 2b: Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Water, Agriculture

Moderators: Massimo Menenti, Rob Jongman

Day 2 – Thursday September 4th, 2008

GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 – Reports from BrainstormingSessions by Pascal Le Grand and Vojko BratinaChair: Florence Béroud

Synergies between EC projects and coordination with GEOReports from Poster SessionModerator: Gilles OllierRapporteur: Ariana Nastaseanu

Conclusions of Workshop and plenary discussionChaired by Gilles OllierPresentation by Pascal Le Grand Closing Remarks by Ms. Manuela Soares

AGENDA OF THE GEO EUROPEAN

PROJECTS WORKSHOP

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This Report is a compilation of the main conclusions of the GEO European Projects Workshop, organised in Brussels on 3rd and 4th September 2008.

Back in May 2008, the European Commission (EC) was consid-ering options to best prepare its contribution to the design of the GEO multiannual Work Plan 2009-2011. The EC Research Directorate was also finalising the Work Programme for the next Framework Programme FP7 Call with the Member States. Finally, very interesting discussions on the European input to GEO were taking place with the members of the High Level Working Group, the European Caucus of GEO.

Taking account of the above, the Research Directorate decided that in the relatively short time available for comments on the Work Plan, the Commission should try and assemble the view-point of European EC Projects on the proposed 2009-2011 GEO Work Plan.

The aim of the Workshop was to review European Commission projects on Earth Observation with various stakeholders and to take this opportunity to consolidate their contribution to an inte-grated Earth Observation (EO) approach in Europe. It was expected that the Workshop would contribute to, on the one hand, developing the collaboration between the projects, and on the other, analysing the draft GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan with a view to contributing to its design and to better embedding the present and future European projects in the GEO Work Plan.

70 participants attended the Workshop, representing 41 projects, 6 pan-European Organisations, 6 European Commission Direc-torates and the GEO Secretariat. The attendance included the participation of most of the European co-chairs who sit at the four GEO committees (5 co-chairs out of the 7).

The Workshop poster session showed 40 posters from EC projects and a few more posters from GEO User Communities of Practice. An A4 copy of the posters presented at the Work-shop is annexed to this report.

The following sections report the discussions held during the Workshop. This report is an initial step taken by the European Commission in the direction of a structured strategic approach to bringing and rationalizing EC contributions to the GEOSS. With the support of our Commission Partners, Organisations or Member States, European Members of the GEO, this path could be followed by all European contributions concerned with the building of the GEOSS.

This report reflects the views of the Workshop Participants when analysing Version 2 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan. At the time when this report is published, Version 3 of the 2009-2011 Work Plan has now been released. The GEO Secretariat has taken into account a number of the recommendations made at the Workshop in Version 3.

INTRODUCTION

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In order to set the stage and present to the participants an understanding of the variety of contributions and the strategy of the different European Commission programmes towards Earth Observation, presentations were given by the different Commission Directorates.

A brief summary is provided here. A copy of the full presenta-tions given during the Workshop can be found on the Europa Research Environment website: http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/geo/article_meetings_gepw.htm

The Joint Research Centre Directorate-General

The JRC mission is to provide scientific advice and technical know-how to support a wide range of EU policies. Many of its var-ious actions aim at turning data from Earth Observation satellites into quantitative information. These actions and the JRC consol-idated engagement in GMES since 1998 are performed in the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) and the JRC Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC). The JRC is also the technical coordinator of the INSPIRE Directive (INfrastructure for SPatial Information in Europe) The Research Centre’s present involvement and future possible interest in the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 was underlined. It includes contribu-tion to more than 20 Tasks out of the 36 overarching Tasks proposed in the Version 2 of the draft Work Plan 2009-2011. The full list can be found as part of the presentation on the Europa website.

Furthermore, the following are upcoming planned GEO related Workshop organised by or with the support of the JRC:• the 1st Workshop on ‘Rainfall Estimates for Crop Monitoring

and Food Security’; 22-24 October 2008; Barza di Ispra (VA) Italy, organised by the Agriculture Unit;

• the 33rd International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment (ISRSE): ‘Sustaining the Millennium Development Goals’; 4-8 May 2009; Stresa (VB), Italy.

Taking into consideration the good outcome of this first GEO Projects Workshop and the request of the participants to repeat this experience, the JRC proposed to organise a side event and a poster session in the context of the next ISRSE-33 in May 2009. This proposal was welcomed by the attendees.

Information Society & Media Directorate-General

There are several complementary programmes managed by DG INFSO that show a high relevance to GEO activities. Three of them in particular address to some extent the ICT and environment communities and deliver ICT tools, instruments, infrastructures and best practices that can be exploited with a view to building a modern GEO System of Systems (GEOSS).

• The FP7 ICT Theme aims to master and shape future devel-opments of ICT through Community research. The Theme notably includes the objective of developing the tools and systems that will enable a Single Information Space in Europe for the Environment (SISE). Such a collaborative Information Space on the Web will be based on a transparent and inter-operable back-end system of systems allowing ad hoc, on demand service chaining and giving users the possibility of plugging in their own use cases and accessing environmen-tal resources such as databases, computing facilities and users interfaces.

• The GEANT & eInfrastructure Programme – To support European e-Infrastructures and to make Europe attractive for the development of virtual research communities. This pro-gramme is targeting the provision of robust and generic electronic service infrastructure for the European research community. Focus is on linking the ideas at the speed of the light (GÉANT), sharing the best resources (e-Science grid), accessing knowledge and scientific data, innovating the sci-entific process by creating global virtual research communities and Designing future facilities (novel e-Infrastructures).

• The ICT Policy Support Programme to stimulate the wider uptake and best use of ICT by citizens, governments and busi-nesses. This programme provide a follow-up to several programmes that are ending, including the eContentPlus pro-gramme which was aiming at making digital content in Europe, including geographic content, more accessible, usable and exploitable in a multilingual environment.

PRESENTATION OF THE EUROPEAN

COMMISSION PROGRAMMES RELEVANT

TO EARTH OBSERVATION

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Research Directorate-General

Earth Observation is by nature Science and Technology relevant. It involves high-tech infrastructures such as satellites, sophisti-cated in-situ networks of sensors and elaborated data storing and processing systems. Earth Observation also requires tech-nology research in order to develop the technologies needed for the observing systems of the future. Finally, observation data are fundamental for running models describing the Earth System. So it is therefore understandable that FP7 provides opportunity for Earth Observation related research activities.

Under the FP7 Cooperation Environment Theme, there are four main activities: 1. Climate Change, pollution and risks. 2. Sustainable Management of Resources. 3. Environment Technologies. 4. Earth Observation and assessment tools for sustainable

development.

All the environmental research conducted under activities 1, 2, and 3 deal with Earth Observation data and systems, either con-tributing to develop new observing systems or collecting and assimilating observation data to develop new models.

What is new in FP7 under the Environment theme is the intro-duction, under activity 4, of a sub-activity Earth and Ocean Observation Systems and Monitoring Methods for the Environ-ment and Sustainable Development. This sub-activity focuses on the development and integration of observation systems for environmental and sustainability issues in the context of GEOSS. It should contribute to making systems interoperable and to optimise the information for understanding, modelling and pre-dicting environmental phenomena, and for assessing, exploring and managing natural resources. A central goal within this sub-activity is to bring the European efforts into the global context, as foreseen within GEO.

Enterprise Directorate-General – GMES Bureau

GMES, (or as it is now known, Kopernikus), is an EU initiative for monitoring environment and security on an operational basis. It has already been identified as one of the European key contributions to GEOSS together with INSPIRE.

Moreover, both initiatives have a mutual interest for coopera-tion: GMES/Kopernikus is not limited to EU boundaries, but addresses EU policies with global reach. The involvement of GMES/Kopernikus in GEO is fundamental for global dimension issues, (global warming, ozone layer, CO2 concentration distribu-tion, food security). GEO is a key vehicle for promoting international cooperation to develop interoperable infrastruc-tures, data and services. GMES/Kopernikus aims at reinforcing the European Observation capacities (both Space and In-Situ), and providing added-value services (Land, Marine, Emergency, Atmosphere, Security) which contribute to the 9 GEO societal beneficial areas.

The contribution of GMES/Kopernikus may start with the reg-istration of the related services to GEOSS. These services are based on several research projects financed by FP6 (in partic-ular Geoland, MERSEA, PREVIEW and GEMS), by FP7 (in particular Geoland2, MyOcean, SAFER and MACC) and by ESA GSE programme. These projects and their consortia could already contribute to the tasks defined in the GEO work pro-gramme 2009-2011, but it is important to have coordination at EU level of the GMES/Kopernikus stakeholders in order to avoid duplication.

It is worth noting that it was proposed that the GEOSS Data Sharing Principles could be reflected in the GMES/Kopernikus data policy, at least for the Core Services outputs, where the restrictions to these principles (security, confidentiality, IPR) still have to be defined. It is likely that the contribution of the Core Services and the Downstream Services to GEOSS will be differ-ent because different data policies may apply. A clause has been embedded in the technical annex of the contracts of the FP7 upcoming projects to make, as far as possible, the information products accessible on a free and open basis to GEOSS.

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The sub-activity splits into 4 main areas:1. Integrating existing European Earth Observation related

activities in GEO;2. Developing cross-cutting research activities relevant

to GEO; 3. Earth Observation activities in emerging areas; 4. Developing capacity building activities in the domain of

Earth Observation.

The first call for proposals in 2007 was intended to cover as many of the GEO Societal Benefit Area’s as possible, mostly with Coordination and Supporting Actions. Eight projects have been selected in the domains of carbon cycle, biodiversity, ocean inte-rior, soil, georesource information in Africa, water resources in Asia, and broadcasting of information in developing countries.

The 2008 call put a specific emphasis on the development of the Initial GEOSS Infrastructure through the funding of three large integrated projects. Additionally a smaller research project is dedicated to research to monitor and observe oxygen depletion.

The current 2009 call was published on 3rd September and focuses on Earth Observation related research needed for Seismogenic Hazards, Environment and Health issues, and sustainable exploitation of mineral resources. It also makes provision to support a Coordinated Action and a Support Action to further structure the European approach to Earth Observation and to support capacity building within GEO.

Finally beyond the current activities supported through this pro-gram, the need for future Earth Observation related research activities have already been identified in Europe by different stakeholders in the following non exhaustive list of domains: • Meteorological Earth Observation systems;• Developing GEO S&T related activities;• Benefit estimation of GEOSS;• Building and processing observational datasets for

reanalysis; • Exploring new GNSS application in the GEO context;• Global observation system for pollutants; • Network of hydrological applications and Runoff process;• Identification and networking of EO activities in

South-Eastern Europe.

Development Directorate-General

The Development Directorate-General pursues GEO work for the ACP Countries (African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries):

Through the European Development Fund 8 (EDF 8), the EU sup-ported the PUMA programme that provided all sub-Saharan countries with the necessary equipment to analyse the EUMETSAT data for interpretation by their meteorological serv-ices. The AMESD programme, which is presently been established in EDF 9, goes beyond weather prediction, and tackles also desertification, deforestation, food security, etc.

In October 2006, the African Regional Organisations, together with the AUC (African Union Commission), the ACP-Secretariat and the WMO, signed the Maputo Declaration that requested the EU to extend the European GMES to Africa and to finance such an extension from the EDF 10.

In December 2007 in the context of the EU-Africa Summit in Lisbon, a conference was organised by the Portuguese Presi dency with the aim to respond to the Maputo Declaration. This has led to the Lisbon GMES Process and Lisbon GMES Declaration.

The competent Commission services, together with ESA and EUMETSAT, are formulating an answer to this Lisbon GMES Process that will provide an action plan for Earth Observation prior to the next EU-Africa Summit of January 2010.

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Presentation of GEO and latest news

The Group on Earth Observations is a coordinating effort to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, the GEOSS.

GEO is a voluntary partnership of governments and internation-al organisations with, as of September 2008, 74 Member Countries and the European Commission, plus 51 Participating Organisations, (intergovernmental, international and regional).

The governance structure of GEO is kept ‘light’. Yearly Plenary are currently co-chaired by South Africa, the European Commission, the USA and China. An Executive Committee of 12 members representing the five GEO regions oversees the activities when the Plenary is not in session and guides the GEO Secretariat, based in Geneva.

Four Committees support the Executive Committee and the wider GEO Community: Architecture and Data (ADC), Science and Technology (STC), User Interface (UIC) and Capacity Building (CBC).

In 2007 the Architecture for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) was designed and the Component and Service registries were ready for operation. An Initial Operating Capability Phase, which started in June 2008, is evaluating the components and functionalities of the GCI. One part of this exercise is the inte-gration of various GEO Web Portals into the GCI to enable data discovery and access. An Architecture Implementation Pilot programme further tests the operating capabilities of the GCI.

In parallel, the Committees are looking to “reach a consensus on the implementation of the Data Sharing Principles for GEOSS to be presented to the next GEO Ministerial Summit (in 2010)”, as requested in Cape Town by the EO Ministerial Summit in November 2007.

Finally, and central to the GEO European Projects Workshop, the process to design a Work Plan for the period 2009-2011 has been initiated in early 2008. Comments were made to Version 1 in August and the GEO Secretariat published the updated Version 2 on 1 September.

Presentation of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 Version 2

The GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 Version 2 document is availa-ble on the GEO website (www.earthobservations.org). The List of tasks proposed in Version 2 is provided as an Annex to this report.

The presentation of the Work Plan V2 issued by the GEO Secretariat on 1st September 2008 emphasised the following key points:

GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan – What is it?The Work Plan is the agreed framework for implementing the GEOSS 10-Year Implementation Plan (2005-2015). It is composed of a set of practical tasks carried out by various GEO Members and Participating Organisations. Finally it is a living document – updated annually.

How did it come about?The Work Plan followed the recommendations of the GEO-IV Plenary & Cape Town Ministerial Summit including: • building upon the cross-cutting dimension of GEOSS; • enhancing data sharing & distribution; • taking benefit of the IGOS Themes transition into GEO; • fostering the development of GEOSS information (products,

services) and the delivery of benefits to society. Moreover the Work Plan built upon the 2007-2009 Work Plan and included proposals & comments made by GEO community and Committees over the Spring of 2008.

StructureThe structure of the 2009-2011 Work Plan is as follows: An intro-ductory Governance Section on the role of GEO Committees & Work Plan Task management and two main parts: 1 – A Tranverse GEOSS; and 2 – The Nine GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas.

ApproachThe 2009-2011 Work Plan is strongly user-driven taking full account of the IGOS transition into GEO. Moreover the Tasks proposed: • introduce strategic overarching objectives; • link relevant 2007-2009 activities; and• ensure continuity with the current 2007-2009 Work Plan.

Role of FP7 ProjectsFP7 Deliverables are highly relevant to GEOSS and FP7 Projects have a key role to play in the GEO Work Plan Implementation. The recommended steps to connect FP7 Projects & the 2009-11 Work Plan in the most meaningful way are: 1. Analyze 2009-2011 Work Plan. 2. Identify synergies between FP7 Projects & Tasks (or sub-tasks). 3. Contact the GEO secretariat to define the nature of any

contribution (Task, Lead and Point of Contact (PoC), Contributor).

4. Discuss with EC and home country possible involvement with GEO Committees (Science & Technology, User Interface, Capacity Building, Architecture & Data).

GEO WORK PLAN 2009-2011

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Outcome of the Brainstorming Sessions – General

The analysis of the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 by the Workshop participants followed the key background presentations and was organised in two Brainstorming Sessions on Day 1, complemented by a Plenary Session in the morning of Day 2.

Brainstorming Session 1 reviewed the Transverse Tasks.

Brainstorming Session 2 reviewed the Societal Benefit Areas Tasks. It was split in two sessions:• Period 1: Weather Climate Energy Disasters Health;• Period 2: Ecosystems Biodiversity Agriculture Water.

All participants had the opportunity to provide their analysis on the Transverse Tasks and to give comments on their domains of expertise during Session 2.

In each session, a chair and one or two moderators animated the discussions.

The chair and the moderators had three objectives in mind: 1. Assessment and Comment of the GEO 2009-2011

Work Plan V2.2. Gap analysis of the GEO Work Plan.3. Participation of EC EO projects to GEO tasks.

Cross cutting issues were also addressed. At the start of the second day, a Plenary Session was held. After reports from the Brainstorming Sessions were given by the rapporteurs, further comments were made by the Workshop participants. These have been included in this and the following sections.

General comments made during the Brainstorming Sessions

The Brainstorming Sessions devoted an important part of their time to the gap analysis of the Work Plan, while it was kept in mind that the number of tasks should be kept at a reason-able level in view of the amount of resources available in the GEO community.

The Chairs reminded the participants that the GEO Work Plan 2009-2011 having only recently been issued, now was the time to analyse and identify synergies between existing and future FP7 projects and single tasks emerging from the Work Plan, leading to a meaningful connection between projects and tasks. Close collaboration between the European Commission and project coordinators is therefore needed to ensure that Europe speaks with one voice when addressing GEO for sharing and proposing ideas.

It was also underlined that gaps emerging from the analysis of the GEO Work plan should be assigned and filled, notably by the working groups underlining the gap, which should take over the responsibility for the task. (As the GEO initiative is based on the principle of voluntary action such additions will not, in principle, be rejected.)

An important point of concern was the way the Work Plan Version 2 did not show adequately the contact points and the leaders of the tasks.

The GEO Secretariat explained that contact was expected to be taken via the GEO Secretariat. In addition, the Task Sheets are available on line. A Task Sheet is a document that com-piles all information pertaining to a Task or to a Sub-task, with contact persons and contact details of the contributors to the Task and with description of the work, planning and progress reporting on the work done under the task. The GEO Secretariat plans, after the Work Plan has been approved at the plenary in November, to update all Task Sheets and in particular the lists of participants.

However, many participants reiterated the point that a main con-tact needed to be mentioned in the Work Plan itself, for discussing and for sharing ideas.

The way EC projects could appear in the Work Plan was also discussed. Task leaders in the work Plan are at present usually countries or large organisations. Indeed, becoming a task lead-er is a strong commitment and task leaders should be able to commit resources. However, EC projects are often as large as and even sometimes larger than country contributions, so their contribution needs to be well recognized. One possibility could be that coordinators are presented as contact points and the contribution is referred to as an EC contribution. The outcome of the discussion was that the GEO Secretariat will incorporate the EC project (coordinators) as task leaders in Version 3 of the Work Plan.

The EC suggested that Information on the leading participants in each task should be expanded in the Work Plan to show the following: GEO Member, Entity carrying out the work, Contact e-mail.

Hence for European Community funded projects, initiatives would be shown as: European Commission, Project name, Project Co-ordinator e-mail.

Also, it was felt important that Task Sheets be explicit about whom the leaders of tasks are. It has been noted that a lead point is sometimes missing and also that often, no lead at all is given for Overarching Tasks, and leads are only provided at sub-task level. This was not considered acceptable, as it could in particular lead to an eventual lack of actual coordination.

A suggestion was made that former IGOS-P themes and Commu-nities of Practice could take the lead in defining a Roadmap to develop the GEOSS and to identify gaps. More generally, the need to involve experts in the work of Committees was empha-sised, while the definition and scope of activity of Communities of Practice in the Work Plan needed to be clarified.

In that vein, another comment was that European partners deal-ing with Earth Observation should participate more actively in the work of Committees to help guide the work of the GEOSS.

Doing an inventory of what is already available in Europe in terms of infrastructure (such as the European soil data base) would be useful to the analysis. From there, one could get a clearer view of what added-value can be derived from the GEOSS. Starting with registering data/services in the GEOSS by all projects, this inventory would be easier to make.

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The importance of the development of standards was reminded. Namely, if GEOSS is to become an integrated product on a glo-bal scale, rather than a mosaic of specific products applied locally but not applicable worldwide, standards need to be pro-duced. At present there is a lack of shared interoperability standards. This is confirmed by the fact that Europe is weak within the GEO Standards and Interoperability Forum (SIF). On the other hand Europe has developed competencies in the domain of interoperability and some interoperability initiatives already exist: there is an advanced ongoing standardisation in geology for example, which should support GEOSS.

Further, EuroGEOSS, a European project currently still under negotiation, will address the scientific and technical feasibility of the European Environment Earth Observation System neces-sary for the implementation of the INSPIRE directive. The GIGAS project will in addition set up the European Regional Team of the GEO SIF and will help to achieve convergence between stand-ards addressing interoperability obstacles between GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES.

Data representation standards are also required in order to make the GEOSS successful and a more consistent European representation was advised here.

This discussion led to the remark that as a general rule, there is not enough return from European contribution in terms of lead-ership of GEO tasks. Europe should look to take the lead in various areas. This was followed by specific proposals which are recorded in the next chapters of the report.

Regarding the General Structure of the Work Plan, it was stated several times that the content of the Work Plan was not always consistent with its structure. There is a mix of Transverse and Topical Tasks throughout the Work Plan and too many Transverse Tasks refer to topical areas. A more coherent view was needed and some felt it important to submit to the GEO Secretariat the requirement that Transverse activities be limited to real cross-cutting activities, while Topical activities be systematically recorded under the SBA section of the Work Plan. Meanwhile, some of the SBA’s lists of tasks need to be streamlined.

A suggestion to align the Transverse Tasks section on the Com-mittees was made, noting that in fact Transverse Tasks are identified for Capacity Building and Architecture and Data/Common Infrastructure, but not for User Interface and Science and Technology aspects.

Another important general remark was that GMES/Kopernikus contributions are not included in the GEO Work Plan, although probably some preoperational elements could be included, GMES/Kopernikus air quality for example.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side a certain concern was expressed that GMES/Kopernikus could provide data to the GEOSS that would not be fully exploited. The suggestion was that the European Commission should therefore promote projects reach-ing outside Europe. Let us note that this is already done with the DevcoCast project, which aims at involving Developing Countries in the GEONETCast initiative and is linked to GMES/Kopernikus activities. The EC is also following the same strat-egy for implementing the INSPIRE directive into GEOSS by funding the EuroGEOSS project as indicated above. In the same way, it could be foreseen that a new project could be funded to see how GMES/Kopernikus services works within the GEOSS. For example: currently GMES/Kopernikus is preparing the spec-ifications for operational services, and there is a need to ensure that it is properly connected to the GEOSS, (in addition to the convergence on the ground of interoperability addressed by the GIGAS project).

It was also underlined that the role of GMES/Kopernikus is cru-cial, as it represents one of the five pillars of the European Community’s contribution to GEO. The other major Community contributions are the Framework Programmes of Community Research, (currently FP7), the Inspire/Interoperability initia-tives, the projects supported by the European Development Fund and the pan-European Organisations.

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GEOSS Transverse Tasks

The following paragraphs record the comments made during the Workshop on the specific Tasks of the Work Plan. They include the specific suggestions made by thematic area on the content of the tasks and the potential of Europe to contribute to and to shape these tasks.

Common Infrastructure

A first remark which is a very central and is of general concern, but particularly affects progress in the development of the Common Infrastructure, is that there is a need to link tasks to targets and to explain how tasks interact to build the common infrastructure. This was mentioned in the European Commission analysis of the Work Plan Version 1 in July and remains applicable to Version 2.

It was recalled that the INSPIRE initiative is an important con-tribution from the European Community through the deployment of INSPIRE components and services, through the develop-ment of the INSPIRE Architecture and INSPIRE geoportal and technology trials, and through the INSPIRE Data Sharing Imple-mentation rules.

The FP7 EuroGEOSS project is expected to address the GEOSS architecture by registering and deploying initial operating capa-bilities in thematic areas of Forest, Drought and Biodiversity/Protected Areas. It is proposed that the project will co-lead sub-task 1.1 a) Enabling Deployment of a GEOSS Architecture (AR-07-01) and contribute to sub-task 1.1.b) GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AR-07-02).

The Work Plan contains at present no mention of computer grids. However it was underlined that GEO should go beyond classical internet web applications and explore grid facilities. The EC FP7 EnviroGRIDS project, (still under negotiation), with the partic-ipation of CERN, will already begin to address this issue in anticipation of the Work Plan. A number of projects financed by DG INFSO should also contribute to this approach (EGEE, GEANT, etc.).

Examples of existing projects that can contribute to the GEOSS architecture were also given:

• The FP7 GIGAS project (DG INFSO) will set-up the European Regional Team of the GEO SIF (Standards and Interoperability Forum) and will help in achieving convergence between stand-ards addressing interoperability obstacles between GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES/Kopernikus. The role of the GEO SIF was emphasised and further projects should also get involved.

• The GENESI-DR project proposes to scientists to use the infra-structure of various European space agencies.

• In the area of data management, GMES/Kopernikus projects have gathered experience that could contribute to the GEOSS.

• The SeaDataNet project aims to improve access to marine data.

• Posters were available during the Workshop to illustrate the importance of many of these projects.

The need to tackle Standardisation in Ontology and Taxonomy subtask 1.1d) Ontology and Taxonomy Development, and the need for support to develop interoperability mechanisms in areas that have not developed yet was emphasised.

A Terminological platform to address the Multilingual component of GEOSS and Interoperability schemes to access data, needs also to be identified for future development.

Still under the 1.1 AR-09-01 GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) task, it is suggested that Model development should be mentioned. The subtasks under this task could also appear in a more logical sequence. However, it was felt that the sequence of tasks may reflect some kind of prioritisation done by the Architecture and Data Committee when drafting the task.

Concerning Task 2 CB-06-04 which covers GEONETCast, which is one of the excellent early contributions to the GEOSS, it was pointed out that different types of receiving stations are need-ed depending on the part of the world (actually on the data provider) where the data are received. It is suggested that har-monisation be advocated in the Work Plan. Discussions on this issue have actually already been ongoing for a year but have not converged yet.

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Coordinated Observation Systems

Following on the remark that in sub-Task AR-09-02 c) Sensor Web Enablement for in-situ Observing Network Facilitation (former DA-07-04): Sensor web enablement has no reasons to be restricted to in-situ data, and space data could be consid-ered as well. (Indeed, a group of experts from the US and Europe are already discussing these issues and is working on practical implementations.)

The following rewording of the sub-task was proposed:

“Foster the development of spaceborne, airborne, sea based and ground based sensing networks (with advances in commu-nications technology, sea based and ground based technologies, it is now feasible to consider…”

As a core activity of GEO, optimisation of observing systems and networks should be considered and taken as a top priority task for Europe, bearing in mind the existing fragmentation. The example of the European meteorological observation net-work was given, in which observing stations had to be reshuffled for optimal coverage of the continent several years ago.

Regarding the Global Carbon Observing System, it was suggest-ed that the activity could be put under the chapter 1.2 Coordinated Observation Systems instead of under the chapter 1.3. Cross-Cutting Data Sets. An alternative, more suitable position, would be that it appears in a Societal Benefit Area instead of in the Transverse part of the Work Plan. This remark was also captured in the SBA Brainstorming Session under the Climate section.

It was felt in general that Land and Soil Observation Systems were not properly covered and identified in the Work Plan. Although land data sets are mentioned in the Work Plan, men-tion of the geological (in-situ or remote) component of a ground observation system is missing, besides the space component provided by the Land Surface Imaging Virtual Constellation. For this reason, the following thematic areas, features of the Earth crust or geological phenomena should be included, addressing respective SBAs: horizontal and vertical movements of the Earth’s crust; natural radiation of the Earth’s crust; radon emis-sion from the ground; landslides and landslide risk zones; ground subsidence and subsidence risk zones (because of underground natural or man-made caverns or weak sediments); volcanic phenomena and volcanic hazard areas; seismic phe-nomena and seismic hazard risk zones; natural or anthropogenic pollution sources and zones of risk; geological resources and perspective areas; groundwater resources and quality; soil ero-sion processes.

This list of topics worth addressing as part of the GEO Work Plan could also find its equivalent in the domain of Global Ocean Observations, which is essential from a social and economic point of view as human population is mainly concentrated in coastal areas and as oceans cover more than 70 % of the Earth. Obser-vation of the upper layer of the ocean is achieved by satellite systems, but deep sea observation requires specific systems. Specific thematic areas should therefore be included in the appro-priate SBAs, for example: tsunami generation (slope failure, seismic activity…), gas-hydrate release, fluid seepage in slope instability, hydrothermal activity, marine sediment transport, deep ocean circulation, benthic storms, ocean acidification, benthic and pelagic impact of marine resource exploitation, regional oxygen minimum zone intensification and hypoxia developments.

Note also the contribution of the following EC projects to Coordinated Observation Systems tasks: the projects SOLO and PROCAS contribute to the Ocean Colour Radiometry virtual con-stellation part of sub task 2.2.a) AR-09-02 Connecting Observation Systems for GEOSS a) Virtual Constellations, and co-chaired by the EC; the GENESIS project work supporting sub-task 2.2d) Model Web Development.

Cross-Cutting Data Sets

Data Integration and Analysis, which is covered in the Work Plan under the task DA-09-02, is performed in Europe through vari-ous national and Community initiatives. The INSPIRE directive is already recognized and properly taken into account in the work of the Architecture and Data Committee. However, it was noted that Europe must ensure that its international partners are not confused by the diversity and number of European Earth Observation initiatives.

There was a strong recommendation to include a new task or sub task, or to reinforce the existing one, with the aim of improv-ing collection and access to relevant socio-economic data. Indeed, with the exception of task DA-09-04 Socio-Economic Indicators, to which the GEOBENE project contributes with ben-efit evaluation of the GEOSS, the Work Plan contains little on socio-economic data. For example, data on demographics are not mentioned in the Work Plan, despite the fact that they are needed for various Societal Benefit Areas like health.

As highlighted some years back by the International Council for Sciences (ICSU), the gap between natural sciences and social sciences will widen because of the ever increasing capabilities in modelling and data analysis based on spatially detailed data, (whether they come from satellites or not). In order to perform an integrated analysis, matching data sets from both categories of sciences need to be available and the social sciences have great problems to deliver that. There are simply not enough good observations about, e.g. population density (gridded by age and education), economic consumption and production (gridded by sector and technology), etc. Integrated models using spatially specific data sets will either be very unbalanced (lacking impor-tant social factors) or erroneous (dealing with the social science factors at an inappropriate scale).

Note the contribution of the following projects to cross-cutting data sets tasks: the EC DESERT project (Desertification, Land Degradation, and Drought), the TREES and MONDE projects on GLC2000 and Globcover, the Geoland project, the e-SOTER project as major contribution to the GLOSIS Global Soil Infor-mation System task, the COCOS, ICOS, IMECC and GEOmon projects as major contributions to Global Carbon Observation.

Capacity Building

Capacity building is at the heart of European strategic policies, especially as concerns the developing world. Earth observation goes hand in hand with Capacity Building, because they both need to focus on the long-term, due to the complexity of the systems that need to be put in place. The need to engage the available scientific capability of the developing world, if one is to build a long lasting contribution, was recalled.

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It was also noted that a strategy was developed by the GEO Capacity Building Committee and that it should be made more visible in the Work Plan. In addition, the need to draw the atten-tion of donors on the various capacity building aspects of the Work Plan was emphasised. A large number of EC projects contribute to the 4.2. CB-09-03 overarching task on Building Institutional Capacity to Use Earth Observations: EnviroGRIDS, AEGOS, CEOP-AEGIS and MONDE in particular contribute to build-ing National and Regional Capacity (sub-task a)); MONDE again, ChloroGIN and DESERT, Geoland, DevCoCast and VGT@WORK contribute to building Capacity Building Networks (sub-task b)).

The YEOS project successfully forecast the Yellow Sea condi-tions during the recent 2008 Summer Olympics Games and contributed to Capacity Building in the region. More generally, the contribution of operational oceanography to Capacity Building could be mentioned in the Work Plan.

Indeed, DMI (Denmark) agreed to use some DMI resources to contribute to such a task, with the MyOcean project following at a later stage. The suggested task would be named CB-09-03: Building Institutional Capacity to Use Earth Observations, d) Building capacity for operational oceanography and be led by Denmark (DMI, Jun She, email). The purpose of this task would be to facilitate ocean data sharing and use by stimulating a glo-bal cooperation on operational oceanography. First a global operational oceanography network will be established, including some advanced operational forecasting centres in developed countries. In a second stage, regional cooperation projects (between advanced and less-developed operational centres) should be established.

Societal Benefit Areas Tasks

Disasters

Tasks from this Societal Benefit Area show a continuity and evolution from previously existing GEO tasks.

A clear role for geosciences within GEO is identified here. Through the tasks of this SBA, geology is given the opportunity to consolidate ongoing standardisation. However, placing geol-ogy only under the Disasters SBA can be questioned. In addition, it is felt that a cross-cutting task on geological factors and phenomena is missing, as was noted during the discussion on Coordinated Observation Systems.

It was also clarified that the first task in the Disasters SBA, DI-06-09: Use of Satellites for Risk Management, was focusing on satellites, even though GEO is far from being a satellite based system, for the reason that this task has been initially devel-oped by space agencies as an effort to bring satellite missions together in a Virtual Constellation for Risk Management.

Capacity Building tasks appear in some of the SBA’s, but not in all. In the case of Disasters it was suggested that a Capacity Building task oriented towards Africa is needed, to address the issue that Africa cannot afford data access, software, technol-ogy, and knowledge, while most of disasters occur in Africa, not in Europe.

The participation of EC projects to the tasks of the Disasters SBA, include in particular, the EMSO project and the EuroSITES Network, together with the EFFIS Forest Fire Information System.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Emergency Core Service. Several research projects are contributing to its development and in par-ticular PREVIEW (FP6), SAFER (FP7), TerraFirma and Risk-EOS (both GMES/Kopernikus Service Elements (GSEs) from ESA). The GMES/Kopernikus conditions for providing information to GEO still have to be defined, knowing that ‘fresh’ information in case of crisis might be subject to restriction during the crisis phase (e.g. to manage properly the rescue operations).

Health

Health is one of the SBAs with the weakest involvement of stake-holders in the GEO context until now. However, the new FP7 2009 Call includes a subject ‘Contributing to observing systems for environment and health monitoring and modelling’.

Suggestions on potential additional contents of tasks emerged from the session: health & geology (geological factors, such as natural radiation), geochemical content in water and soil related to health, air quality.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Atmosphere, Marine and Land Core Services. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular: in the field of air quality GEMS (FP6), MACC (FP7) and PROMOTE (GSE from ESA); in the ocean field MERSEA (FP6), MyOcean (FP7) and MarCoast (GSE); in the land field Geoland (FP6), Geoland2 (FP7) and GMFS Global Monitoring for Food Security (GSE).

A remark was also made on the perceived level of duplication between the three listed tasks, suggesting that only one over-arching health task was necessary.

Energy

EnerGEO, a new FP7 project currently under negotiation is the appropriate project to feed in an important contribution of Europe to task EN-07-02: Energy Environment Impact Monitoring, linked also to the other two tasks of this SBA (01 Management of Energy Sources & 03 Energy policy Planning).

It was noted that the Community of Practice for Energy has set up a plan whereby these tasks are only steps towards the global implementation plan.

It was also suggested that the GEO Science and Technology Committee needed to involve itself and make connection between those tasks.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Land Core Service. FP7 MACC and Geoland2 projects can also contribute to the tasks of the Energy SBA on respectively solar radiation measurements and bio-fuels.

(1) Dr. Philippe Ciais LCSE, lead contribution.

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From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Atmosphere, Marine and Land Core Services. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular: in the field of air quality GEMS (FP6), MACC (FP7) and PROMOTE (GSE from ESA); in the ocean field MERSEA (FP6), MyOcean (FP7) and MarCoast (GSE); in the land field Geoland (FP6), Geoland2(FP7) and GMFS (GSE). The GSE PolarView can contribute too.

The preparation of a specific Core Service for Climate Change is under discussion.

Water

A contribution to task 1. WA-06-02 Droughts, Floods and Resource Management, is the development of the European Flood Alert System (EFAS) at the JRC, which aims at providing twice-daily for the whole of Europe an early flood warning for possible floods that could occur within the next 10 days, using deterministic and ensemble weather forecasts from ECMWF, DWD and COSMO-LEPS within a distributed hydrological modelling system. Dissemination is through an online system (http://efas.jrc.it), currently open to EC and European Water Authorities only.

CEOP-AEGIS will take the co-lead in sub-task 1.b WA-06-02 Droughts, Floods and Water Resource Management (impacts from Drought) and 3.e WA-08-01 Integrated Products for Water Resource management and Research (Water Cycle Data Integration), providing also data-sets for other tasks (2.c Capacity Building for Water resources Management in Asia, 3.a .b and .d Integrated Products for Water Resource management and Research on a) Soil Moisture, b) Runoff and d) Precipitation).

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Land Core Service. In particular project Geoland2 (FP7) plans to provide a major contribution to this SBA, in particular for task 1.a WA-06-02 Droughts, Floods and Water Resource Management (Forecasting and Early Warning Systems for Droughts and Floods) and for task 2.b WA-06-07 Capacity Building for Water resources Management in Africa.

Climate

ECMWF has a Contribution in the Task CL-06-01: Sustained Reprocessing and Reanalysis of Climate Data, but this requires financial support. ‘Reanalysis’ is a powerful approach to climate analysis that has emerged in the last 15 years. It applies the tools and techniques of modern everyday weather forecasting to the existing large archives of atmospheric observations in order to create a homogeneous and dynamically-consistent time series of many parameters of the global atmosphere. This pro-vides a most comprehensive and accurate four-dimensional picture of our atmosphere and effectively allows us to monitor the variability and change of global climate, thereby contributing also to the understanding and attribution of climate change.

The LCSE (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Envi-ronnement, CEA-CNRS), in France (1), confirmed it could contribute to the sub-task CL-09-01 2b) Climate Information for Decision-Making, Risk management and Adaptation.

It was noted that the European Commission is financing a number of research projects on climate and needs to identify links that could be made between some of those activities funded outside the Earth Observation sub-activity and the GEO tasks.

As recorded earlier in the chapter on Coordinated Observations Systems Transverse tasks, the carbon activity tasks would be better placed amongst the climate SBA tasks. Climate being so large in reach, many cross-cutting activities could be linked to this SBA.

In addition, in-situ observations which appear at present in trans-verse task Coordinated Observation Systems 3.b) Key Terrestrial Observations for Climate should also be brought back to the Climate SBA for consistence.

A remark was made that Paleo-indicators of Climate can bring information on past Climate Variability; this could be a possible subject of study contributing to the CL-06-01 Sustained Reprocessing and Reanalysis of Climate Data. As an example, the European Commission has already funded a project for recov-ering old ship log books with details on climate from previous centuries. Note that the PAGES project (Past Global Changes project in IGBP) has since the Workshop, proposed the addition of a sub-task to that effect.

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Weather

There is one task on High-Impact Weather Prediction, which is understood as meaning the consequences of severe impacts caused by weather. It could also be a Transverse Task, as many of weather related areas appear as Transverse Tasks, or con-versely, a number of Transverse Tasks which address Weather could form part of Weather SBA tasks. For example, the observ-ing component of weather is currently under the Transverse Tasks 2.3. In the longer term it was felt that there should not be a dif-ferentiation between the classification of satellites and in-situ weather tasks.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Atmosphere and Marine Core Services. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular: in the field of air quality GEMS (FP6), MACC (FP7) and PROMOTE (GSE from ESA); in the ocean field MERSEA (FP6), MyOcean (FP7) and MarCoast (GSE). These projects will help in aspects of seasonal weather forecasting and extreme events anticipation.

Ecosystems

For the task 1.EC-09-01 Ecosystem Observation and Monitoring Network (GEO EcoNet) a) Ecosystem Classification and Mapping (former EC-06-02), the project EBONE confirmed their contri-bution. Participating in EBONE is the chairman of ILTER (2), who could contribute to 1.c) Regional Networks for Ecosystems (EC-06-07) as part of the European ILTER.

In addition, the JRC requested to co-lead under sub-task 1.c) Regional Networks for Ecosystems or sub-task 1.d) Protected Areas Assessment and Monitoring (GEO PAAM).

Geoland2 also intends to contribute to sub-task 1.c), as well as the HYPOX project under negotiation, which will also contribute to 1.b) Ecosystem Status and Trends.

The EuroSITES Network of Observatories also expressed an interest in contributing to sub-task 1. b) Ecosystem Status and Trends. EuroSITES ocean time-series data from the deep ocean include data on key climate variables which are relevant for assessing ocean ecosystem status, health and functioning and for validating/constraining ecosystem models.

There are large activities in Europe for setting up Ecosystem Models and this was considered as a gap in the tasks of this SBA.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Marine and Land Core Services. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular: in the ocean field MERSEA (FP6), MyOcean (FP7) and MarCoast (GSE); in the land field Geoland (FP6), Geoland2(FP7) and GSE Forest monitoring (GSE).

Agriculture

Under Task 2. AG-07-03 Global Agriculture Monitoring, Geoland2 intends to contribute to all the three subtasks 2.a) Global Monitoring System, 2.b) Agriculture Risk Management, and 2.c) Expanding Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture and Promoting Capacity Building in developing Countries.

The JRC (3) wishes to share the lead with the USA on sub-task 2.a) Global Agriculture Monitoring System (former AG-07-03). This will be seen as a logic proposal as the JRC’s Agriculture Unit participated to the IGOL Rome 2006 meeting and actively to the IGOL Rome 2007 meeting. The Unit organised two GEO AG-07-03 a) meetings in 2008 (Ispra): one in June on ‘Best prac-tice for crop area estimates/forecasts’ and the other planned for next October on ‘Rainfall estimates in Africa’ and has agreed to be co-organiser of the Feb 2009 Beijing AG-07-03 a) meet-ing. (Note, the JRC also, participates to the GEO Agriculture Community of Practice.)

The project CEOP-AEGIS is also to contribute to 2.c) Expending Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture and Promoting Capacity Building in Developing Countries, (in this case in Asia).

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Land Core Service. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular Geoland (FP6), Geoland2(FP7) and also GMFS (GSE) for Food Security.

It was noted that soil aspects disappeared from the Agriculture SBA in the new Work Plan, and were added to the Transverse Tasks. The project e-SOTER is taking part in the correspond-ing task.

Biodiversity

In task 1.a) Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), the project EBONE is willing to share the lead.

There was a new suggestion regarding the observation of migrating bird to build a network of Atlantic flyways of birds from North to South, linked to Health, Biodiversity, Agriculture, and Ecosystems. There is a worldwide observation gap to be filled on this subject.

From the GMES/Kopernikus side the major contribution to this SBA will be provided by the Marine and Land Core Services. Several research projects are contributing to their development and in particular: in the ocean field MERSEA (FP6), MyOcean (FP7) and MarCoast (GSE); in the land field Geoland (FP6), Geoland2 (FP7) and the GSE project on Forest Monitoring.

(2) Dr. Terry Parr, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and Chairman of ILTER.

(3) Jacques Delincé – Head of Unit Agriculture at the Institute for the Protection and

the Security of the Citizen, JRC.

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Compendium of Recommendations

General

• Information on the leading participants in each task should be expanded in the Work Plan to show the following: GEO Member, Entity carrying out the work, Contact e-mail.

• European partners dealing with Earth Observation should par-ticipate more actively in the work of Committees.

• Former IGOS-P themes and Communities of Practice could take the lead in defining a Roadmap to develop the GEOSS and to identify gaps. The scope of the GEO Communities of Practice need however to be better defined.

• The mix of Transverse and Topical Tasks throughout the Work Plan should be avoided: Transverse Tasks referring to Topical areas should be in the SBA area. The Transverse Task section should be aligned with the Committees.

• Work on shared interoperability standards must be a priority both at the architecture level and within topical areas, rely-ing in particular on the work done through the INSPIRE directive and on the work started by some of the Communities of Practice.

Transverse Tasks

• Tasks should be linked to targets and there should be an explanation in the Work Plan of how tasks interact to build the common infrastructure.

• Incorporate grid infrastructure in GEOSS development.

• Harmonisation of standards for GEONETCast receiving sta-tions should be advocated in the Work Plan.

• Web-sensor-development should be fostered, not only at in-situ level, but at all data levels, including space.

• The optimisation of observing systems and networks in Europe should be addressed.

• Tasks on land observation systems need to be comple-mented and also address the geological (in-situ or remote) components.

• Social sciences data sets need to be emphasised and linked to the natural sciences models in a Work Plan task.

• It would be desirable to incorporate the Capacity Building strategy in the Work Plan.

• Capacity Building in the domain of operational Oceanography is ready to be deployed with partners in Asia, Africa and Latin America and is proposed as new sub task.

Social Benefit Tasks

• A number of GMES/Kopernikus contributions could be includ-ed in a large number of Societal Benefit Area Tasks of the Work Plan.

In particular preoperational elements can be released in 2008, for example on air quality. Kopernikus as one of the pillars of the European Community’s contribution to GEO will further support operational services elements which are now being specified.

• A Capacity Building task for Africa in the Disaster SBA is need-ed, as this is where many of the disasters occur.

• The Climate SBA reach is so large that it could be linked to many other activities through cross-cutting tasks. It is how-ever advisable to list climate tasks under the corresponding SBA section.

• A strong European support is given to the study of climate from the perspective of historical data, from the angle of reconstruction of paleo-indicators on the one hand and from the angle of reanalysis of archived data using new generation tools and techniques on the other.

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Collaboration between EC projects

At the start of the Plenary Session which covered the aspects of enhancement of coordination at EC project level, the moderator proposed three directions for opening the discussions:• collaboration between projects which develop their activities

in the same areas of research;• collaboration enabling EC funded ICT to be better taken into

account;• collaboration between research projects and delivery of serv-

ices projects (for instance GMES/Kopernikus).

A series of ‘cluster’ projects was spontaneously gathered during the discussions:

1. In the domain of the Initial Operating Capability, EnviroGRIDS, EnerGEO and EuroGEOSS (FP7 ENV-2008 call) could cooper-ate together, mainly contributing to cross-cutting aspects (capacity building). EnviroGRIDS proposed as a first step to invite the other two projects to their kick-off meeting.

2. Part of land (Geoland2 project) and ocean (MyOcean project) GMES/Kopernikus fast track services are already taken into account by the DevCoCast FP7 project and this could be extended to a third fast track service (emergency). DevCoCast further builds on a number of projects such as YEOS (FP6), ChloroGIN (pilot for GOOS-Africa) and VGT4Africa (FP6) and has links to EDF funded PUMA and AMESD initiatives (DG Development). DevCoCast and GEONETCast (as infrastruc-ture backbone that brings together various data providers and users) are further open to cooperation, in particular for data sharing (i.e. new data providers & users), capacity building and application development in developing countries.

3. EuroSITES expressed its commitment to cooperate with ESONET, ACOBAR, and COCOS projects, and its openness to extend cooperation to even more projects.

4. ESONET has cooperation with almost all ‘ocean projects’ and with the OneGeology project.

5. GeoMon reported that although it is an FP6 project which is close to its end, it was however ready to further cooperation and requested EC support in order to promote this to other projects.

6. CEOP-AEGIS stressed the issue of geographical areas, being interested in cooperation with other projects which develop their research activities in the Tibet Plateau or South Asia. It has already established a partnership with e-SOTER project and would do the same with DevCoCast.

As regards collaboration on Information Science aspects, ESA proposed the idea of Memoranda of Understanding across different projects, which would address the possibility to share resources and allow working together with shared data, infra-structure (GRIDS), and efforts.

JRC presented the model used within the GIGAS project, which is an open forum and could serve as a tool for collaboration among different projects.

Enabling Grids for E-Science (EGEE) offered the possibility of using the GRID Cluster which exists in Europe since 2000 and has well established cooperation with USA, Latin America, and North Africa.

Regarding projects developing from research and leading to the development of services (for instance GMES/Kopernikus), the DevCoCast project was mentioned and its links with GMES/Kopernikus (point 2) above). DevCoCast and related activities also support the users directly and help them set up/improve their own environmental monitoring services.

How can we optimise the benefit to the projects and the contribution to GEO

The GEO Secretariat invited the coordinators of the projects to make their own analysis of the GEO 2009-2011 WP and to iden-tify the synergies between the tasks and their project and to communicate them directly to the GEO Secretariat, which will communicate with the tasks leads and experts. The EC request-ed the projects to first send this information to the EC, so that the Commission could collect all these opinions and then for-ward them to the GEO Secretariat, thus being kept in the loop; the process being otherwise incomplete with the EC missing this important information flow.

EUMETSAT underlined that as GEO is international, cooperation within the GEO tasks also helps increase the visibility of the European participants.

Asking the audience whether the Work Plan matches the inter-est of the European participants and dealing with how to influence this living document, the EC presented their main com-ments on version 1 of the GEO 2009-2011 WP. These comments were in particular addressing Section 1, ‘A Transverse GEOSS’, which in the view of the EC should be re-organised so that it splits into four sections, ensuring in this way the activities of the Committees are coherently reflected in the Transverse Tasks: Architecture and Data, Capacity Building, User Interface, Science and Technology.

It was suggested that Committee Tasks and Transverse Tasks must not necessarily be equivalent, since Committees deal with (management) processes, while tasks deal with objects (deliverables).

The importance of having good Communities of Practice (CoP) and having European involvement in those was underlined. The importance of bringing concerns to the CoPs and of increasing European participation in GEO Committees was also stressed.

EC PROJECTS SYNERGIES AND COORDINATION

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The European GEO family of projects: Coordination and way forward

The idea of bringing all projects into a European family of projects and presenting them as one of the five pillars of the European Community's contribution to GEO was presented by the Commission and supported by a number of participants.

As an illustration, the history of operational oceanography in Europe was briefly presented. The coordinated effort has resulted in Europe being well in advance of other nations, and its position being recognised at international level. This needs to be recognised in Europe as an investment and transferred into an operational global system.

The Organisation of a forum of the European funded projects in the area of Earth Observation was proposed.

The EGEE project further suggested that a percentage of the projects funding went into general meetings and forum, as is the case with ICT projects (at the level of 10 %), initially formed around GRIDS and then extended to a general ICT forum.

Use of IT tools like Wikis was suggested.

ESA suggested that this excellent initiative of organising the Workshop be continued. On one hand it could be structured by subject (through a series of Workshops organised by SBA), and on the other hand the perimeter could be extended to the five pillars of European contribution to GEO: 1. European Organisa-tions; 2. GMES/Kopernikus; 3. Inspire; 4. Research Projects; and 5. Development Projects.

Another suggestion was to include in the forum a range of end users not yet involved with the GEO, such as insurance users.

The JRC then offered to add a side event to the 33rd International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment which will be held on May 4-8, 2009 in Stresa, Italy. This would be a first opportunity to follow up on this first GEP Workshop.

Participation from tasks to the CoP is also considered poor. Regarding the role of the CoPs, it was suggested that the CoPs may be a good mean to cover and guide the overarching tasks.

A two steps approach was proposed: first involve EC projects into the Work Plan tasks and then have them involved in the GEO Committees.

It was also suggested to link the list of European Communities of Practice under the INSPIRE SDICs (Spatial Data Interest Communities) with the GEO website.

As regards best practices in the area of capacity building, it was reminded that the EC Development General-Directorate (DG DEV) has implemented many successful projects, especially in Africa. Building a close cooperation with the Directorate would help capacity building initiatives of GEO. Illustrating this DG DEV later briefly presented the PUMA and AMESD projects.

The Joint Research Centre promised an increased participation in some specific tasks, recognizing the strategic role which should be played by the JRC at the European level.

Finally the need for projects to register their data standards, components and services to the GEOSS was also underlined.

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Compendium of Recommendations

Collaboration between EC Projects

• A series of ‘cluster’ projects was spontaneously gathered during the discussions.

• Collaboration on Information Science Approaches between projects was proposed, to be promoted using several tools: Memoranda of Understanding across projects, addressing the sharing of resources, data infrastructure (GRIDS), and efforts; Open Forum as tool for cooperation within and out-side Europe.

• Collaboration between research projects and delivery of services can be further developed in particular using the DevCoCast project.

Optimising the benefits to the projects and the contribution to GEO

• The GEO Secretariat and the European Commission both encouraged projects coordinators to communicate the poten-tial of contribution of their projects to the GEO Work Plan so that it can duly be taken into account.

• The resultant benefit to the projects can be through increased international cooperation between global partners and an extended visibility of the projects in their Communities of Practice.

• Communities of Practice are tools which could be better used to address concerns of European Projects. They could take a leading role with the Work Plan Overarching tasks.

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• To increase the European contribution to GEO, a two step approach was proposed: firstly involve EC projects into the tasks and then secondly have them involved in the Committees.

• The projects need to register their contributions in the GEOSS.

The European GEO family of projects

• The European Research Projects forms one of the five pillars of contribution of Europe to GEO, the other being GMES/Kopernikus, INSPIRE, the European Organisations and the Development Projects.

• A forum of the European funded projects in the area of Earth Observation is proposed.

• The Initiative which resulted in this Workshop should be pur-sued and extended to include European stakeholders and the European Community pillars of contributions to the GEOSS.

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The Workshop led to a number of comments and recommenda-tions on the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan Version 2 distributed by the GEO Secretariat just two days before the event.

Gaps were identified, whilst keeping in mind that to have satis-factory progress, the number of the tasks in the Work Plan needed to remain manageable.

The main comments concerned:• the need to have GMES/Kopernikus contribution included in

the GEO Work Plan;• tasks on land observation systems need to be comple-

mented and to address the geological (in-situ or remote) components;

• there is far too little coverage of socio-economic data in the Work Plan;

• tasks concerned with the development of standards for data need to be better highlighted;

• grid infrastructure should be incorporated in the GEOSS devel-opment plan;

• the structure of the Transverse Tasks and repartition of tasks between Transverse and Topical SBA chapters requires more consistency.

The EC project participation in the GEO Work Plan also led to a number of comments and recommendations, in particular:

1. How EC projects can appear in the Work Plan, how EC project contributions can appear in tasks: the GEO Secretariat has heard the question and will carry out a review of EC projects on basis of input to be sent through the European Commission.

2. The need to involve scientific experts and European project coordinators in the work of GEO Committees and Communities of Practice.

3. The need for projects to register their data standards and services to the GEOSS was underlined.

4. The EC funded Research Projects are seen as one of the pillars of the EU contribution to GEO, the others being: The pan-European Organisations, GMES/Kopernikus, INSPIRE and the Development projects.

The identification of European Leads and participants in exist-ing and future GEO tasks has been initiated. In particular the GMES/Kopernikus projects and the JRC have taken action to participate in a number of tasks, and new significant European participation have been identified in most of the SBAs, as recorded in the paragraphs of the report.

As all is on a voluntary basis, it is understood that contributing to a task is as much a commitment to it as a benefit to the project in terms of cooperation and international visibility.

Finally, it can be said that through this first Workshop a European GEO family of projects has been created, that has already started to generate many contacts and increased coordination leading to synergies and expert reinforcement.

Further thoughts will be spent on the organisation of a forum of the European funded projects in the area of Earth Observation, maybe using an IT tool like a Wiki. A follow up to this Workshop to measure progress made and organise the following steps is already being planned.

The report of this Workshop is circulated to the participants and provides critical input to the EC communication to the GEO Secretariat on the GEO Work Plan, and to the European GEO High Level Working Group.

CONCLUSION

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We would first like to thank: the coordinators, coming from all over Europe and representing in total more than 40 Projects; the representatives from the European Organisations ESA, Eumetsat, the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), EuroGeosurveys and the EEA, who have assisted us throughout the year with ideas, decisions and suggestions.

We would also like to thank the representatives of the European Community from the Programme Directorates concerned: DG Enterprise with the GMES Bureau, DG Information Society from both Brussels and Luxemburg, DG Development, DG Environment, the Joint Research Centre, who are playing a leading role in shaping the support that Europe brings to the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) and to the building up of the GEOSS.

Finally, we would like to thank Alexia Massacand from the GEO Secretariat for agreeing to come and present Version 2 of the GEO 2009-2011 Work Plan only two days after it was pub-lished. This was central to the work during the two days of the Workshop.

This mix of competencies, the excellent quality and the enthu-siasm of the attendance, has clearly allowed us to realise the objectives that were defined when the plans for this Workshop were initiated.

DG RTD, Environment Directorate

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

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ACOBAR – Acoustic Technology for observing the interior of the Arctic Ocean

AEGOS – African European Georesources Observation System

AÏDA – Advancing ICT for DRM in Africa

BIOSTRAT – European Biodiversity Research Strategy

BOSS4GMES – Building Operational Sustained Services for GMES

CEOP-AEGIS – Coordinated Asia-European long-term Observing system of Qinghai – Tibet Plateau hydro-meteoro-logical processes and the Asian-monsoon systEm with Ground satellite Image data and numerical Simulations

COCOS – Coordination Action Carbon Observation System

DevCoCast – GEONETCast for and by Developing Countries

EBONE – European Biodiversity Observation Network: a project to design and test a biodiversity observing system, integrated in time and space

EDEN – Emerging Diseases in a Changing European Development

EGEE – Enabling Grids for E-sciencE

EMSO – a European Multidisciplinary Seafloor Observatories Research Infrastructure

EnerGEO – Energy Observation for monitoring and assessment of the environmental impact of energy use

EnviroGRIDS – Building Capacity for a Black Sea Basin Observation and Assessment System supporting Sustainable Development

ESONET – The European Sea Floor Observatory Network

e-SOTER – Regional pilot platform as EU contribution to a Global Soil Observing System

EuroGEOSS – European approach to GEOSS

EuroSITES – European Ocean Observatory Network: Integration and enhancement of key existing European deep-ocean observatories

eWATER – Multilingual cross-border access to ground water databases

GEANT – Pan-European Gigabit Research and Education Network

GEMS – Global and regional Earth-system (Atmosphere) Monitoring using Satellite and in-situ data

GENESI-DR – Ground European Network for Earth Science Interoperations – Digital Repositories

GEOLAND – GMES products & services, integrating EO monitoring capacities to support the implementation of European directives and policies related to land cover and vegetation

GEOMIND – Geophysical Multilingual Internet-Driven Information Service

GEOmon – Global Earth Observation and Monitoring of the atmosphere

GIGAS – GEOSS, INSPIRE and GMES an Action in Support

GMFS – Global Monitoring for Food Security

GSE Forest Monitoring – Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Services Element (GSE) for Forest Monitoring

HYPOX – In-situ monitoring of oxygen depletion in hypoxic ecosystems of coastal and open seas, and land-locked water bodies

ICOS – Integrated Carbon Observing System

IMECC – Infrastructure for Measurements of the European Carbon Cycle

InterRisk – Interoperable GMES Services for Environmental Risk Management in Marine and Coastal Areas of Europe

MACC – Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate

MarCoast – Marine and Coastal Environmental Information Service

MERSEA – Marine EnviRonment and Security for the European Area

MyOcean – Definition and set up of a concerted and integrated pan-European capacity for ocean monitoring and forecasting

MONRUCK – Monitoring the marine environment in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan using satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar

OneGeology – OneGeology Europe

OSIRIS – Open architecture for smart and Interoperable networks in Risk management based on in-situ Sensors

PolarView – Earth Observation for Polar Monitoring

PREVIEW – PREVention, Information and Early Warning pre-operational services to support the management of risks

PROMOTE – PROtocol Monitoring for the GMES Service Element

Risk-EOS – GSE network of European service providers delivering geo-information services to support the management of flood, fire and other risks

SAFER – Seismic eArly warning For EuRope

TENATSO – Tropical Eastern North Atlantic Time-Series Observatory

TerraFirma – Pan-European Ground Motion Hazard Information System

VGT4Africa – Distribution of VEGETATION data in Africa through EUMETCAST

YEOS – Yellow Sea Observation, forecasting and Information System

PROJECTS ACRONYMS

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ANNEX 1: PARTICIPANTS LIST

ACOBARStein SANDVEN (NERSC, NO)

AEGOSStuart MARSH (BGS, UK)

AÏDAGeert BORSTLAP (VITO, BE)

BIOSTRAT Tiiu KULL (EMU, EE)

BOSS4GMESGraham DEANE (INFOTERRA, UK)

CEOP-AEGISJérôme COLIN (LSIIT, FR)Li JIA (WUR, NL)Massimo MENENTI (LSIIT, FR)

COCOSMichiel VAN DER MOLEN (FALW, NL)

DevCoCastTim JACOBS (VITO, BE)

EBONERob JONGMAN (WUR, NL)

ECMWFManfred KLOEPPEL (ECMWF, UK)

EDENGuy HENDRICKX (AVIA-GIS, BE)

EEARobert LAWSON (EEA)

EGEEMonique PETITDIDIER (CETP IPSL, FR)Horst SCHWICHTENBERG (SCAI Fraunhofer, DE)

EnerGEOChris BREMMER (TNO, NL)Emile ELEWAUT (TNO, NL)

EnviroGRIDSAnthony LEHMANN (UNIGE, CH)

ESAJérôme BEQUIGNON (ESA, BE)Luigi FUSCO (ESA/ESRIN, IT)

ESONETRoland PERSON (IFREMER, FR)Christoph WALDMANN (MARUM, DE)

e-SOTERVincent VAN ENGELEN (ISRIC WUR, NL)

EumetsatVincent GABAGLIO (EUMETSAT, DE)

EuroGEOSSFrancis BERTRAND (BRGM, FR)Max CRAGLIA (EC JRC, IT)

EurogeosurveysPatrice CHRISTMANN (Eurogeosurveys)

EuroGOOSHans DAHLIN (SMHI, SE)

European CommissionAlessandro ANNONI (EC JRC, IT)Florence BEROUD (EC RTD, BE)Vojko BRATINA (EC RTD, BE)Max CRAGLIA (EC JRC, IT)Harry De BACKER (EC DEV, BE)Hugo De GROOF (EC ENV, BE)Jean-Luc DOREL (EC INFSO, BE)Mark DOWELL (EC JRC, IT)Alan EDWARDS (EC RTD, BE)Freddy FIERENS (EC JRC, IT)Pascal LE GRAND (EC RTD, BE)Josiane MASSON (EC ENTR, BE)Ariana NASTASEANU (EC RTD, BE)Gilles OLLIER (EC RTD, BE)Francesco PIGNATELLI (EC JRC, IT)Michel SCHOUPPE (EC INFSO, BE)Manuela SOARES (EC RTD, BE)Marcel WATELET (EC INFSO, BE)

EuroSITESRichard LAMPITT (NOC, UK)Kate LARKIN (NOC, UK)

eWaterJan JELLEMA (TNO, NL)

GEANTElena COWLES (DANTE, UK)Richard HUGHES-JONES (DANTE, UK)

GEMSManfred KLOEPPEL (ECMWF, UK)

GENESI-DRLuigi FUSCO (ESA/ESRIN, IT)

GEOBENEMichael OBERSTEINER (IIASA, AT)

GeolandSteffen KUNTZ (INFOTERRA, DE)

GEOMINDJulius BELICKAS (ITG, LT)Artemios ATZEMOGLOU (IGME THES, GR)

GEOMIND/EarthSemanticsTomasz MARDAL (PGI, PL)

GEOmonPhilippe CIAIS (LSCE IPSL, FR)Christiane TEXTOR (LSCE IPSL, FR)

GEO SecretariatAlexia MASSACAND (GEO Secretariat, CH)

GIGASFreddy FIERENS (EC JRC, IT)

HYPOXFelix JANSSEN (MPI, DE)Christoph WALDMANN (MARUM, DE)

ICOS, IMECCPhilippe CIAIS (LSCE IPSL, FR)

InterRisk Stein SANDVEN (NERSC, NO)

MONRUCKStein SANDVEN (NERSC, NO)

OGC/ERDASHervé CAUMONT (IONICSOFT, BE)

OneGeology Garry BAKER (BGS, UK)

OSIRIS Danielle TACYNIAK (THALES Group, FR)

PREVIEW, SAFERGil DENIS (INFOTERRA, FR)

STC Udo GAERTNER (GEO S&T Committee, DE)

TENATSODouglas WALLACE (IFM-GEOMAR, DE)

TurkeyTamer OZALP (TUBITAK, TR)

UICThierry RANCHIN (ENSMP, FR)

VGT4AfricaTim JACOBS (VITO, BE)

YEOSJun SHE (DMI, DK)

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Content

1. A TRANSVERSE GEOSS 1. Common Infrastructure 2. Coordinated Observation Systems 3. Cross-Cutting Data Sets 4. Capacity Building

2. The 9 GEOSS SOCIETAL BENEFIT AREAS

1. Disasters 2. Health 3. Energy 4. Climate 5. Water 6. Weather 7. Ecosystems 8. Agriculture 9. Biodiversity

1. A TRANSVERSE GEOSS

1. GEOSS Common Infrastructure 1. AR-09-01 GEOSS Common

Infrastructure (GCI) a) Enabling Deployment of a GEOSS

Architecture (AR-07-01) b) GEOSS Architecture Implementation

Pilot (AR-07-02) c) GEOSS Best Practices Registry

(DA-06-09) d) Ontology and Taxonomy

Development

2. CB-06-04 GEONETCast

3. CB-09-01 Infrastructure Development and Technology Transfer for Information Access

a) Open Source Software (CB-07-01e) b) CBERS c) SERVIR Expansion d) The African-European Georesources

Observation System (AEGOS)

4. DA-09-01 Data Management a) GEOSS Data Sharing Principles

(DA-06-01) b) GEOSS Quality Assurance Strategy

(DA-06-02)

c) Data, Metadata and Products Harmonisation (DA-06-04)

2. Coordinated Observation Systems

1. AR-06-11 Radio Frequency Protection

2. AR-09-02 Connecting Observation Systems for GEOSS

a) Virtual Constellations (DA-07-03) b) WIS (AR-07-04) c) Sensor Web Enablement for In-Situ

Observing Network Facilitation (DA-07-04)

d) Model Web Development

3. AR-09-03 Advocating for Sustained Observing Systems

a) Key Climate Data from Satellite Systems (CL-06-02)

b) Key Terrestrial Observations for Climate (CL-06-03)

c) Legacy of the International Polar Year 2007-08 (CL-06-05)

d) Global Ocean Observation System (CL-06-06)

e) Global Observing System for Weather (WE-06-01 and WE-06-02)

3. Cross-Cutting Data Sets

1. DA-09-02 Data Integration and Analysis

a) Data Integration and Analysis Systems (DA-07-06)

b) Meteorological Satellite Observations

c) Ensemble-Technique Forecasting Demonstrations (DA-06-03)

d) Global Geodetic Reference Frames (AR-07-03)

e) Atmospheric Model Evaluation Network

2. DA-09-03 Global Data Sets a) Global Land Cover (DA-07-02) b) Forest Mapping and Change

Monitoring (AG-06-04) c) Bio-geophysical & Land Surface

Data d) Global Phenology Data e) Global Digital Elevation Model

(DA-07-01)

f) Development of Global Map for GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas (DA-06-05)

3. DA-09-04 Socio-Economic Indicators a) Socio-Economic Benefits of GEO

and GEOSS b) Spatially-enabled Socio-Economic

Databases for Africa

4. DA-09-05 Global Carbon Observation and Analysis System

a) Integrated Global Carbon Observation (IGCO) (EC-06-01)

b) Forest Carbon Tracking

4. Capacity Building

1. CB-09-02 Building Individual Capacity in Earth Observation

a) Recognition of Cross Border Education and Training in EO (CB-08-01)

b) Summer Institute on Climate Information for Public Health

c) UN-SPIDER/GEOSS Summer Schools on Space-based Solutions for Disaster Management and Emergency Response

d) Developing the CBERS GEO Capacity Building Network

e) Earth Observation Education for Youth – Games Contest and GLOBE/GEO Project

2. CB-09-03 Build Institutional Capacity to Use Earth Observation

a) Building National and Regional Capacity (CB-07-01d)

b) Establishing Regional Capacity Building Networks

c) Building capacity for non-technical decision-makers in the use and impact of Earth observation

3. CB-09-04 Capacity Building Needs and Gap Assessment

a) Identifying Best Practices, Gaps and Needs (CB-07-01b)

b) Capacity Building Performance Indicators (CB-07-01c)

c) User Oriented Workshops for GEOSS Outreach and Feedback

ANNEX 2: GEO 2009-2011 WORK PLAN

VERSION 2 – LIST OF TASKS

34

2. The 9 GEOSS SOCIETAL BENEFIT AREAS

1. Disasters

1. DI-06-09 Use of Satellites for Risk Management

2. DI-09-01 Systematic Monitoring to Support Geohazards Risk Assessment

a) Vulnerability Mapping and Risk Assessment (DI-06-03 and DI-06-07)

b) Seismographic Networks Improvement and Coordination (DI-06-02)

3. DI-09-02 Implementation of Multi-Risk Management Approach and Regional Applications

a) Implementation of a multi-Risk Management Approach (DI-06-08)

b) Regional End-to-End Disaster Management Applications (DI-07-01)

4. DI-09-03 Warning Systems for Disasters

a) Tsunami Early Warning System of Systems (DI-06-04)

b) Implementation of a Fire Warning System at Global Level (DI-06-13)

2. Health

1. HE-09-01 Information Systems for Health

2. HE-09-02 Monitoring and Prediction Systems for Health

a) Aerosol Impacts on Health and Environment: Research, Monitoring and Prediction (HE-07-03)

b) Air Quality Observations, Forecasting and Public Information

c) Water Quality Monitoring Projects for Human Health (HE-07-02 and WA-07-01)

d) Global Monitoring Plan for Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

3. HE-09-03 End to End Projects for Health

a) Implementation of Meningitis Decision-Support Tool (HE-06-03)

b) Implementation of a Malaria Early Warning System

c) Ecosystems, Biodiversity and Health: Decision-Support Tools and Research

3. Energy

1. EN-07-01 Management of Energy Sources

2. EN-07-02 Energy Environment Impact Monitoring

3. EN-07-03 Energy Policy Planning

4. Climate

1. CL-06-01 Sustained Reprocessing and Reanalysis of Climate Data

2. CL-09-01 Environmental Information for Decision-making, Risk Management and Adaptation

a) Towards Enhanced Climate, Weather, Water and Environmental Prediction (CL-07-01)

b) Climate Information for Decision-making, Risk Management and Adaptation

5. Water

1. WA-06-02 Droughts, Floods and Water Resource Management

a) Forecasting and Early Warning Systems for Droughts and Floods

b) Impacts from Drought c) ACQWA

2. WA-06-07 Capacity Building for Water resources Management

a) Latin America b) Africa c) Asia d) Europe

3. WA-08-01 Integrated Products for Water Resource management and Research

a) Soil Moisture b) Runoff c) Groundwater d) Precipitation e) Water Cycle Data Integration f) Pilot Projects for Improved

Water Discovery and Quality Assessments

6. Weather

1. WE-06-03 TIGGE and the Development of Global Interactive Forecast System for Weather

2. WE-09-01 Capacity Building for High-Impact Weather Prediction

a) Infrastructure for Numerical Weather Prediction

b) Socio-economic Benefits in Africa from Improved Predictions of High-Impact Weather

7. Ecosystems

1. EC-09-01 Ecosystem Observation and Monitoring Network (GEO EcoNet)

a) Ecosystem Classification and Mapping (EC-06-02)

b) Ecosystem Status and Trends c) Regional Networks for Ecosystems

(EC-06-07) d) Protected Areas Assessment and

Monitoring (GEO PAAM)

2. EC-09-02 Human Dimension of Ecosystem Utilisation and Conservation

a) Global Road and Human Settlements Mapping on GEO Grid

b) Tourism Impact on Environmental, Social and Economic Regional Activities

c) Developing Transport Infrastructure in Africa

8. Agriculture

1. AG-06-02 Data Utilisation in Fisheries and Aquaculture

2. AG-07-03 Global Agriculture Monitoring

a) Global Agriculture Monitoring System (AG-07-03)

b) Agriculture Risk Management (AG-07-02)

c) Expanding Earth Observation Applications in Agriculture and Promoting Capacity Building in Developing Countries (AG-06-07)

9. Biodiversity

1. BI-07-01 Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON)

a) Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON)

b) Invasive Species Monitoring System (BI-07-02)

c) Capturing Historical and New Biodiversity Data (BI-06-03)

Documents

GEO European Projects Workshop ReportGEO European Projects Workshop Report 3-4 September 2008 Brussels, Belgium 2008 Directorate-General for Research – Environment EUR 23603 EN EUROPEAN