EO4SDG at GEO Week 2023: “The Earth Talks”

It was a week of valuable insights and celebration in Cape Town, South Africa! The Group on Earth Observations hosted its annual GEO Week Plenary and Ministerial Summit from 6-10 November. Our Co-Chairs Lawrence Friedl and Osamu Ochiai represented EO4SDG attending sessions and fostering new connections across the Earth observations field. 

This year’s plenary theme was The Earth Talks, which orients around “GEO’s unique ability to listen to what our planet is saying and inspire actions through trusted, open Earth observation solutions.” The workshops, technical meetings, flash talks, and showcase events held demonstrated new possibilities for data, science, and technology integration to act on Earth insights.

SDG Workshop

On November 7, Osamu Ochiai facilitated a talk with a wide range of speakers focused on innovative Earth observation usage to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). During the first half of the event, five speakers gave flash talks on their areas of expertise. Topics included partnership building on the Copernicus Ecosystem and its enhancement on SDG monitoring, imagery deep learning models, the Earth Observations Toolkit on Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements, and SDG advancement through the lens of urban safety. 

The flash talks were followed by a roundtable discussion where Osamu engaged the speakers not only about their research but also the relevance of their work to the UN 2030 Agenda. The panel discussed the challenges facing multi-sectoral partnership building efforts, the contrast of current and past technologies for urban safety management, generating meaningful impact for users, participation opportunities for GEO, and more. The session was enhanced by real-time audience polling, which provided helpful insights on how these subjects resonate with people from various perspectives. We are grateful for our panelists, who represented the European Commission Joint Research Centre, Esri, the European Association of Remote Sensing Companies, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong!

GEO Awards Ceremony

The conference gala dinner and awards ceremony on November 8 provided us the opportunity to honor the incredible work that our 2023 GEO SDG Awards winners have done to broaden EO data usage for sustainable development. Andiswa Mlisa, a long-serving EO4SDG contributor and 2023 Awards evaluation panelist, joined our co-chairs on stage to present our 5 winning organizations with their trophies and communicate the value of this awards program. 

Congratulations to the project teams from the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites SDG Coordination Group, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), the World Resources Institute, Lesotho Bureau of Statistics and FAO Lesotho, and Politeknik Statistika STIS! For more photos from the gala, check out GEO’s Day 3 Flickr album.

USGEO Exhibit

We featured the Earth Observation Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements in the U.S. Group on Earth Observations (USGEO) Jazz Observatory exhibit, which showcased how American-led projects have innovated to link EO data with science and policy communication. Our section was themed “Songs of the Cities,” as we highlighted the Toolkit as a hub for geospatial data and tools to foster knowledge sharing between EO specialists and stakeholders in urban communities. 

Outside of our NASA representatives, we have numerous Toolkit contributors based at U.S. research organizations who aim to ensure that the EO Toolkit is dynamic and globally relevant. As the national interagency coordination mechanism for civil Earth observations activities at the federal level, USGEO has supported EO4SDG’s development through its role as a primary GEO investor since 2003. 

We extend many thanks to everyone who made these events possible, including our NASA support staff, our SDG workshop participants, and the GEO Week coordination team! 

Date Published: November 29, 2023