The GEOportal is one of the three candidates developed in response to a set of requirements from the GEO Secretariat aiming at the implementation of a GEO Web Portal serving the GEO User Community.
In the last decade, the value of Earth Observation (EO) to society has significantly grown among both the public at large and policy makers worldwide. As presented in a recent article on Earthzine (Scanning the Globe) the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is coordinating efforts to build a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, or GEOSS.
It has become clear in recent years that human beings need to be much more careful in how we develop the Earth’s resources if that development is to be sustainable for future generations. To support sustainable development, in turn, we need to know the present state of the Earth and the impact of our activities. Measuring that impact and sharing the results with decision makers around the world is the goal of a major international scientific effort, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).
ESA and the European Commission have signed a €48 million grant that will allow the space agency to ensure the coordinated and timely supply of satellite-based Earth Observation data for the preoperational phase of GMES from 2008 to 2010. The signing of the grant marks the first real cooperation between the two in the GMES framework.
Following the creation of the ad hoc intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations in Washington in 2003, South Africa’s Rob Adam was selected as one of GEO’s four co-chairs, alongside colleagues from the U.S., Japan and the European Commission.
If you’re a scientist or engineer cobbling together a geospatial project, say you’re trying to figure out how many people would be threatened by a tsunami in the Indian Ocean, a truism holds that you spend 80 percent of the time hunting down usable data. The data, when they exist at all, often are archived in incompatible formats, have varying degrees of accuracy and precision, and sometimes require a good deal of political savvy to find.
