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Back to GEO News issue #9

… and a round GEO Committee meetings

The four GEO Committees – Architecture and Data, Capacity Building, Science and Technology, and User Interface – held their second-ever joint meeting in Pretoria immediately following May’s Work Plan Symposium.

 

The meeting venue in Pretoria
The meeting venue in Pretoria

Each of the Committees addressed in turn the cross-cutting issues on which they seek to interact with the other Committees in order to support the implementation of the GEO Work Plan. Support to implementation of the Data Sharing Principles and Data Sharing Action Plan topped the long list, with support to the development and management of cross linkages between Tasks emerging as another key focal area.

The Committees acknowledged the important work by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and the US Environmental Protection Agency in conducting intensive testing of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure prior to and during the Work Plan Symposium and the subsequent collocated Committee meetings.

Discussion topics also included possibilities for improving the GEOSS Common Infrastructure in response to findings from the usability testing, strengthening cross-Task linkages, improving the tools for monitoring and supporting the execution of the GEO Work Plan, providing stronger incentives for contributing to GEOSS, performing gap analysis and gap filling across Societal Benefit Areas, setting priorities within GEOSS, and measuring progress.

Several interesting proposals were presented, including for a GEO label, a continuity indicator, and an Earth Observation Assessment Report. Further cross-Task issues, such as working towards consensus on achieving quality assurance and building on the work of the Quality Assurance for Earth Observation (QA4EO) subtask team, were also addressed. The opening of access to the User Requirements Registry was announced. Finally, contributions to the Ministerial Summit, and in particular the Exhibition, were discussed in detail.

The Committees also held brief individual meetings:

  • The Architecture and Data Committee (ADC) reviewed in detail the many lessons learned from the Work Plan Symposium, which included the need to address the GEOSS architecture elements that are not part of the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI), the need for intensified outreach on the benefits of interoperability and of registering as a GEOSS resource, and the opportunities for increased interaction between subtasks, for example on cross-cutting issues such as quality assurance.
    Most of the meeting focused on refining the draft Architecture and Data Management strategy. As the status of most Architecture and Data Management subtasks had been highlighted already during the Work Plan Symposium, the ADC concentrated for the remainder of its meeting on a deeper review of specific activities, in particular the ongoing third phase of the Architecture Implementation Pilot, the impact of the Data Sharing Principles on the GCI and the GEOSS Architecture, and the interoperability between GEOSS and regional interoperability initiatives.
  • The Capacity Building Committee also reviewed the main outcomes of the Work Plan Symposium. It discussed plans for the 2010 Ministerial Summit, including ideas for a capacity-building exhibit and showcase.
    The Committee’s proposed showcase for the Ministerial will be a 3-5 minute movie promoting the importance of capacity building for GEO and the benefits it brings to society, in particular in developing countries. It will feature storylines centred on how people reap benefits from new information chains that empower local players (authorities and citizens) to address local issues. The video script will focus on food security and crop monitoring, showing the full information chain (data assembled and analysed to produce ready-to-use information) in developing countries in the three regions of South America, Africa and Asia.
  • The Science and Technology Committee (STC) reviewed the ongoing success of the Asian Water Cycle Initiative (AWCI), noting the importance of the issue to all participating countries, the effective engagement of participants via regular symposia, and the cooperative frameworks that have been developed for engaging countries on specific issues. As part of the discussion engaging with the private sector, South Africa made a presentation of how it is working with a fire warning and power company in a way that maximizes environmental security and operations.
    Other business included reviewing specific Tasks and the Water SBA, reviewing all outstanding Committee actions from previous meetings, discussing the proposal for making an Assessment Report on Earth Observations, and taking note of progress on an ongoing questionnaire survey of all Task Points of Contact and Leads, which will lead to an assessment of gaps and continuity issues across the Work Plan and will be available in time for GEO-VII in Beijing.
  • The User Interface Committee oversaw the fifth round of GEO Web Portal (GWP) Usability Testing, which was conducted during the week’s GEO Work Plan Symposium. The Committee is also taking the initiative in the User Requirements Registry (URR) project. One of three GEOSS registries, the URR will be a tool whereby users can register Earth observation users and the applications and requirements they need to apply Earth observation data for societal benefit.
    The UIC distributed three questions to each Task lead attending the Work Plan Symposium – Who are your users? How have you engaged your users over the past two years? How will you engage your users over the next two years? All answers were put into a spreadsheet for further analysis. The US Environmental Protection Agency will sponsor an exhibition for the UIC at the Beijing Plenary and Ministerial Summit. Progress was reported on the UIC initiative to identify priority Earth observations among Societal Benefit Areas – information on critical Earth observations has been gathered from publicly available documents for each SBA and a cross-SBA analysis has been launched.

Back to GEO News issue #9

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GEO News Issue #17
(13 December 2011)

 

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