Into Global Earth Observation Initiatives (BalkanGEONet)

A new project was recently initiated by the European Commission to stimulate the broader participation of the Balkan Countries in GEOSS activities. The project is coordinated by Prof. Vladimir Crnojevic of the University of Novi Sad, Serbia.

Several! Balkan Countries such as Croatia, Greece, Romania! and Slovenia are already members of GEO. These countries are currently performing a number of activities within the GEO work plan and other activities called out in the GEOSS 10 year Implementation Plan. However, the broader inclusion of all Balkan countries is of great importance since only a comprehensive regional EO framework can achieve the GEO objective s of comprehensive understanding and improved utilization of resources in a sustainable manner leading to increased quality of life and stronger economic development.

The BalkanGEONet project brings together EO data users, research and governmental institutions, SMEs and international organizations as well as a number of world leading experts in the field of EO. This broad range of participation is needed to address many of the challenges occurring in the Balkan region.  Besides the different cultural backgrounds and attitudes toward the environment, natural resources and the functioning of governments, the economies of the region are quite disparate – where the average GDP per capita in Slovenia is $30,000US,  while that in Bosnia and Albania is $6000US. Thus the willingness to directly invest in science verses housing and social welfare projects differs according to country in the region. BalkanGEONet will work throughout the regions to reinforce the access to and understanding of the benefits of Earth Observation for societal decisions.

Marko Delimar of IEEE is participating on the Advisory Board of the project.

A consortium of national organizations led by the Italian National Research Council has received a grant from the European Commission.  The major goal of the grant (named EGIDA (an Italian acronym)) is to support broader implementation and effectiveness of the GEOSS Science and Technology Roadmap and the mission of GEOSS through coherent and interoperable networking of national and international initiatives and European projects.  IEEE as a member of the consortium has been assigned to lead the Dissemination and Outreach Task.

EGIDA will prepare a sustainable process promoting coordination of activities carried out by: the GEO Science & Technology (S&T) Committee; S&T national and European initiatives; and other S&T Communities.  EGIDA will deliver evaluation processes, tests and assessment indexes, expertise databases, a “GEO Label” concept, surveys, and other instruments that will link relevant European S&T communities to GEOSS and ensure it is built using state-of-the-art science and technology. Through co-ordination with the GEOSS S&T Committee (five co-chairs are involved in EGIDA), these deliverables will contribute strongly to the GEO S&T Roadmap implementation.

EuroGEOSS is a large scale integrated project in the Seventh Framework programme of the European Commission. The project builds an initial operating capacity for a European Environment Earth Observation System in the three strategic areas of Drought, Forestry and Biodiversity. It then undertakes the research necessary to develop this further into an advanced operating capacity that provides access not just to data but also to analytical models made understandable and useable by scientists from different disciplinary domains. This concept of inter-disciplinary interoperability requires research in advanced modelling from multi-scale heterogeneous data sources, expressing models as workflows of geo-processing components reusable by other communities, and ability to use natural language to interface with the models. IEEE is the lead for Work Package 7 Capacity Building and Dissemination.

In the first 18 months of the project from May 2009 to October 2010, the project has implemented an initial operating system in which the databases on forestry, drought and biodiversity were populated. The initial demonstration is focused on Spain. The information from the three domains was then accessible through a broker, which translates formats and language across domains to allow users access to a broader picture of the environment. The broker is guided by both domain practices and the interoperability guidelines of INSPIRE, ISO, OGC and international standards.

EuroGEOSS also addresses the outcomes of the new operating capabilities through an economic impacts assessments which models both the benefits and costs with and without the new GEOSS-related information. This is essential if the developments of EuroGEOSS are to widely adopted across the full range of GEOSS societal benefit areas.

Adoption is supported by an active outreach work package within the project that offers tutorials, seminars and conference presentations. Preview tutorials.

For more on EuroGEOSS