GEO 101 - an intro to the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). GEOGLOWS: EO and global streamflow forecasting
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00:00
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:07
Good morning, congratulations for making it in at nine o'clock on a Friday morning. So I'm Stephen Ramage from GEO, from the Group on Earth Observations.
00:20
You might have seen me speak earlier in the week and I talked a little bit about what GEO is doing and I tried to provide some ideas on how to engage with GEO from this community. I'm going to set the scene a little bit, I'm going to talk a little bit more about GEO and then we have our three speakers. I'll let you introduce yourselves because I think when people introduce me they always
00:42
say random things and I'm like no that's not, say other things so I'll let you say what you want to say, or maybe just say your names. So what I wanted to talk through is that, so GEO is an intergovernmental partnership, so it's an organization that's really there to help countries, so everything we do
01:07
is supposed to be about helping the countries. The countries created GEO, GEO is funded by the countries and it exists to support the countries. Everything else that we do is in support of the work for the countries. So any work we do with the World Bank or with Conservation International or with
01:23
the Gates Foundation or with any other organization, any of the UN agencies is all to support the countries doing their work around Earth observations. So it's really about the value and usefulness of Earth observations for research, policy, decision making and action, that's what we do.
01:42
So the plenary is kind of like this meeting, so everyone gets together once a year, all the countries come in and that's a decision making body, so we have what are called a set of rules of procedure and that governs the whole of GEO and how we operate. To deliver what happens each year between the plenaries, there's an executive committee
02:02
and the executive committee is made up of 16 countries and that's split across the different caucuses or the different global regions. So we have representatives from Africa, South America, Asia, Europe and we also have Russia and CIS. And then we have a work program which is the implementation of all the activities which
02:22
is really the hub and the nub of what GEO does and the way for people to engage in GEO is through the work program and then we have the secretariat who kind of like, you know, herd cats, that's kind of my job. So we sit in the middle of everything trying to pull it all together and trying to make sure connections are right, trying to help with funding, trying to help with outreach,
02:43
trying to help with science, trying to help with many, many different things. So we're kind of like, if you know the expression in English, jack of all trades, that's kind of what we do in the secretariat. So we're based in Geneva, although most of us are never actually there because we're always doing these kind of things traveling around.
03:00
So what I'll do is I just wanted to, these are the countries at the moment, so there's 105 countries, there are two areas that will probably become a lot more blue getting close to a plenary this year and that's here and here. So we're hoping to bring in about 15 to 20 countries from the Pacific because we're going
03:23
to have a big Pacific track and we're hoping to bring in about another 5 to 10 countries from Africa. So that's a big step forward for GEO. The goal is not really to have every single country but it's to have as many countries as possible that want to work with Earth observations and want to use them.
03:40
Here you can see the what are called participating organizations but that's essentially partner organizations. There's now about 130 of these organizations but if you think about the areas where GEO works, agriculture, biodiversity, climate disasters, energy, forestry, oceans, water, there are many different organizations in each of those domains who are leading activities, who are
04:05
experts, who have their own communities and so we rely on them. So in this sort of atmospheric area it would be WMO or in the climate area with UNFCCC and IPCC and a number of those types of organizations and that's really how GEO is set up.
04:21
So within each specific area we work with the leading organizations because they have not just the technical know-how but also the capacity and the skills to deliver in those areas and they're most importantly working on the policy. So we're trying to feed Earth observations into the policy. So one of the areas we work in is the Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction just
04:45
an example and what we've done is we've put language into the Sendai framework or into some of the reports around the Sendai framework to explain to countries how Earth observations can support disaster risk reduction. So that makes it much easier for the countries when they're trying to make decisions or they're
05:01
trying to write their own policy they can reference the global policy from the United Nations. Does that make sense? So I made up this slide just to kind of really show, so what I said about GEO is all about the country so that's the core, the members and then the partners of PEO as the
05:22
associates and the regional GEOs. The operational part is GEO was created over a decade ago to build this global Earth observation system of systems so to help bring together disparate Earth observation, Earth observing systems. It's something that will never be achieved because it's just an ongoing thing but the
05:43
efforts to do it are very important because that then brings about you know coordination and collaboration and different things. So the GEOs infrastructure was all about trying to get open data so we worked for many many years to get open data, open Earth observations, data and information from
06:04
countries around the world and from the partners and from others and so we've collected all that data from something like 7,000 data providers and now we want to push not just data access but people to start really using the data. So it's kind of what Julia was saying in her keynote and I said it too but she
06:22
said it much better that we really want to, we don't just want to know what data is available we want to know who's using it, how they're using it and what they're using it for. So that's really where we're going. So the knowledge hub is kind of where we're going with that. So we have this knowledge hub concept where we'll have scientific papers, journals,
06:41
we'll have access to Pangea, we'll have working with code, with Python, with R, we'll be working with the data, the methods and the algorithms. And so if you think about what happened in a couple places like the States when the administration changed and climate data and other open data was pooled, we'll have
07:01
a repository that people will be able to access for the long term that will be curated by GEO. And then within the work program itself there are 70 odd activities and I'll touch on that in a bit but I thought these were some of the key ones that were particularly interesting for this community because of what I'd seen for
07:20
the papers that have been submitted. And then in the long term what we're really trying to do is deliver against these policy instruments. So we're trying to help the countries understand how can Earth observations help you with your national adaptation planning, with your nationally determined contributions, with the different aspects of the policy instruments. So whether that's disaster risk reduction, whether that's for climate
07:41
mitigation or adaptation, whether that's for looking at biodiversity or any other areas, that's what we're trying to help with. So policy input, open data, open science and capacity development. So I don't know if you can see but I tried to highlight in a sort of slightly
08:03
darker color the areas where I thought the FOSS4G community could really help within the work of GEO. So this is kind of a snapshot. I was thinking what I might do for those of you who are on Twitter, or even those who are not on Twitter, was I was going to actually go through and pick out kind
08:24
of like A for agriculture, put up GEOGLAM, B for biodiversity, put up GEOBON and put the implementation plans publicly because a lot of people have spent a lot of months putting these implementation plans together. There are many different, you know, 30, 40 pages and it talks about how all of
08:42
this stuff is going to be done. And it's a great, if you are working in biodiversity or if you are working in forestry or if you are working in oceans, you can look at the implementation plan and see what they are hoping to do, how they are hoping to do it and who is involved. And so I think for me what's not really clear and what I couldn't tell you off
09:03
the top of my head is what are the activities around free and open source software in the GEO work program. I really don't know that so that's probably a bit of a challenge to myself and others in the GEO community but I think that would be quite useful to know.
09:21
And I talked about all the other stuff in the slide so I'm not going to repeat it. So with all these different activities, with more than 70 work program activities, there needs to be a way to frame it and to focus it. So the engagement priorities, these were set at a GEO ministerial summit. Every four years we have a ministerial summit and in Mexico these were set.
09:42
And so these three areas, this is what I joined to do. I joined to help develop the strategy for the engagement priorities. So that's kind of what I'm supposed to be doing although I do lots of other stuff. So we've been working on the 2030 agenda, so the SDGs, we've been working on the Paris Agreement and we've been working on the Sendai framework.
10:02
Quite recently UN habitat approached us and asked us if we would look at the urban topic. So we've been looking to work with them and Nairobi and elsewhere on the new urban agenda and where the urban topic fits in. So there are many different areas where earth observations can support urban decision making, which are maybe not necessarily obvious to everyone.
10:24
So if you're an urban planner, you might not know anything about earth observations, but think about the peri-urban area, think about land use, land change, think about heat maps, think about where to put for energy. Looking at one of our programs is GeoVeneer, which is looking at where to put solar panels,
10:42
so using earth observations to determine those locations. So there are many different aspects of urban where earth observations can inform and support those activities. So that's just a bit of a snapshot there on what's happening. I really have no idea how many people are actually collaborating
11:01
because every time I go to a meeting, like I go to Peru or Korea or something and suddenly 200 people show up and I'm like, ah, who's not heard of Geo? And they're all like, no, we've all been working with Geo for five years. So it's this huge community that it's really hard to understand how big it is, but we have to kind of keep going into countries and spending time with the country members
11:25
and sort of reminding them and explaining what's actually happening. So without talking much more, I want to just give you a feel, but here you can see the flagships and initiatives. So these are the kind of higher level activities.
11:41
There are also about 35 community activities. So a community activity could be started by, we could start one right here and right now. We could start the FOSS4G, EO, I don't know, bicycle riding community activity. We could do that right now and it's up to us how much effort we put in
12:02
if we want to create a plan, if someone wants to fund it, all of that stuff. If you want to create an initiative, then it's a bit more formal and it does need to have a plan and it does need to have some funding. And then the flagship has a policy driver, has long-term funding, has an implementation plan. So there's different levels of maturity and different levels of activity.
12:24
The flagships, the GeoBond Biodiversity Observation Network, GeoGLAM, GFOI and GOSS4M, they all have their own very large communities. So for example, GOSS4M on the Mercury monitoring, GOSS4M will actually be part of the Minamata Convention.
12:41
So if countries are working to look at Mercury, monitoring Mercury, there's a lot of in-situ observations that are used and GOSS4M has a lot of that data through the GOS infrastructure. So that's an example of one of the flagships that's going to support policy. And there's now a Minamata Convention, there's a Minamata Secretariat, which is in Geneva.
13:03
So we're working very closely with them. Same for GFOI and REDD+, GeoGLAM for the G20 Ministers of Agriculture. So there are big drivers at GeoBond for CBD and HA and other areas. There are big policy drivers for all of these activities.
13:21
And so what we're trying to do is bring in as much of the community as possible but all with the goal of helping the countries do their monitoring, reporting and implementation of these policy instruments. So I will now hand over to Julia, who's going... If you can see my beautiful star that I created last night,
13:41
she's going to talk about GeoGLOS.