On October 23-27 2017, the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) community will come together in Washington, D.C. for GEO Week 2017. GEO Week 2017, consisting of GEO-XIV Plenary, side events and exhibition, will highlight and promote the role, applications and opportunities to use Earth observations (EO) in delivering ‘Insight for a changing world’.

With a focus on delivery and impact, GEO Week 2017 will explore the use and applications of EO in both the public and private sectors for the benefit of humankind.

ENVRI community will be presented at this event through its joint booth and the side event. The theme of the event is  “The European Environmental Research Infrastructure Community a sustainable in-situ contribution to EuroGEOSS“. It will be organized Mon 23 October from 11:00 to 12:30 in Continental C. 

The purpose of the event is to send a strong signal to the Earth Observation community that ENVRI community is committed to contributing to the challenges as were laid down in the most recent GEO workplan. There are already established considerable contributions from ENVRI to many GEO Flagships, Initiatives and Community Activities, and it’s important to acknowledge and build on that.

Specific aims

The aim is to create a clear awareness of this ‘supply’ of data, information and knowledge from Europe to the in-situ component of GEOSS through ENVRI, that fulfill the ‘demand’ of knowledge by GEO and its Flagships, Initiatives and Community Activities. The ENVRI community wants to acknowledge and underline the importance for Europe, to play its role in supplying the necessary data and information, and for GEO to satisfy the demand for these products in search of achieving its mission as stated in the Mexico City Ministerial Summit Declaration during the twelfth GEO plenary in 2015 and the most recent work programme.

Set-up and program

At this side event, the European Commission will present the current contributions of its Research Infrastructure programme to GEO. How it contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s), the GEO focus areas and the implementation of the GEO workplan. Future perspectives and outlook should be part of that presentation, to illustrate the way ahead of us.

We invite GEO to address the need for well developed, independent and objective scientific information to achieve its goals, and how Research Infrastructures play their role, also beyond the European borders, on a global scale. An illustration of this will be presented through inviting a GEO Flagship or Initiative discussing the connection between these SDG’s and the specific focus area of this Flagship.

Finally, a major European Research Infrastructure will present how the ENVRI community currently operates jointly towards an holistic view of earth observation, keeping track of the planet in different environmental domains through a multidisciplinary approach.