Spark! Experience - Earth Observation and Geographic Information

Floods, urban heat islands, pests and disease damaging crops and forest plantations… These trends are all the result of our rapidly changing climate and have repercussion on our livelihoods and health, the economy, our planet’s biodiversity etc. The urgency to understand, plan and mitigate these phenomena is well known and requires immediate action.

Earth Observation and geographic information collected by satellites have become crucial in this context to provide live information and forecasts to different sectors such as forestry, agriculture, or urban development to name a few. Potential end-users for this information are also infinite as new use-cases are constantly being created to support civil servants, nature managers, farmers, NGOs, companies and the civil society in their activities.

EIT Climate-KIC has partnered with the EO4GEO project to design this event where you will learn more about the use and applications of satellite data in climate-change related challenges. The EO4GEO project is an Erasmus + project aiming to bridge the gap between the supply and demand of skills in the Earth Observation and Geographic Information sector through, among other actions, the provision of trainings materials and training actions to young graduates and professionals. During this event, stakeholders from the institutional, academic and private sector will give you the context on the sector and main ongoing initiatives. They will also present their activities and use-cases where they are using Earth observation and geographic information to tackle climate change.

At the end of the session, you will understand:

• What Earth observation and geographic information is
• How the data is collected, transformed, and used to solve different issues
• Which are the main stakeholders from the sector
• What type of information is available and how to retrieve it.

The programme

17:00 - 17:30h Welcome and EIT Climate-KIC Introduction, a Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC), working to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society.

17:30 - 18:00h Space Programme introduction - EUSPA

18:00 - 19:30h Case studies and interactive workshop

19:30 - 20:00h Closure

Speakers

Eduard Escalona, Market Development Innovation Officer - The European Union Agency for the Space Programme

Andreas Kazantzidis, Professor - University of Patras

Diego Saez-Gil, Co-founder - Pachama

This activity has received funding from the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT). This body of the European Union receives support from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.