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GEOSS Platform further enhanced

16 Nov 2018

The GEO-XV Plenary and GEO Week 2018 took place in Japan from 27 October to 2 November 2018, at the International Conference Center in Takaragaike, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto.

Signed at this same location on 11 December 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty that extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

As such, it provided the perfect setting to discuss the progress made by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in improving the availability, access and use of Earth observation for a sustainable planet, with a focus on the three GEO engagement priorities:

  • the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
  • the Paris Agreement
  • the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction

During the meeting, recent and upcoming enhancements and features of the GEOSS Platform were demonstrated. Managed by the European Space Agency as part of the EDGE project and co-funded by the European Commission and ESA, the platform offers improved discovery, access and use of over 430 million registered Earth observation resources from all over the world and from more than 5,000 resource providers via the GEOSS Portal and developed Community Portals.

The use of workflows for learning more about climate themes was demonstrated for ecosystem modelling in the context of the European Commission co-funded project ECOPotential. Attendees were shown the whole process, beginning from protected areas, ecosystems, workflows, selection of data, activation of the process and visualisation of results via the GEOSS Platform portal.

Screenshot of GEOSS Platform portal
The ECOPotential project benefits from workflow management implemented as part of the GEOSS Platform

The use of datacubes was addressed in a collaboration with the European Commission co-funded project GEOEssential, which benefits from the GEOSS Platform instruments in combination with the Swiss Datacube to support Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on indicator 15.3.1 proportion of land that is degraded over total land area.

GEOEssential project diagram
The GEOEssential project supports the Sustainable Development Goal indicator generation 15.3.1 proportion of land that is degraded over total land area

A third demonstration regarded on-demand generation of Analysis Ready Data from Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 data for selected land applications. Such Analysis Ready Data is easier to use for those who are not experts in the use of satellite data.

Analysis Ready Data On Demand Demonstrator
The Analysis Ready Data On Demand Demonstrator showed how Analysis Ready Data can be prepared on-demand as input to selected land applications.

The European Space Agency is working together with the GEO Secretariat, the Italian Research Council – the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution (CNR-IIA), the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the European Commission DG JRC and DG RTD, MINES ParisTech and many other stakeholders, to further improve the implementation of GEOSS, thus supporting decision-makers to take better-informed decisions and actions for the benefit of society.

The objective is to continue such developments into 2019, in line with the GEO engagement priorities so the GEO XVI Plenary – which will take place in Canberra, Australia, at the end of 2019 - will be an even greater success.

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