Click here to read latest News of SMURBS project

SMURBS ,which now traverses its 13th month of life, is currently organizing the PM1 Milestone Meeting, that will be held in Athens, Greece from 9 to 10 October 2018! The meeting will be hosted by the National Observatory of Athens and conducted in the premises of ELECTRA Metropolis Hotel.
During the meeting, SMURBS partners will deliver the major achievements of the 1st year of implementation of the project, while a thorough discussion regarding the themes (Air Quality, Disasters, Urban Growth) engaged by the project will take place.

ERA-PLANET Annual Project Meeting
11 September 2018
University of Geneva, Bd. Carl Vogt 66, Geneva

 Meeting Agenda

 Click here to to download related presentations

ERA-PLANET will participate in the GEO Week 2018 which will take place in Kyoto from 29th of  October to 2nd of November 2018 in Kyoto, Japan.

This gathering of GEO’s 105 Member governments and 126 Participating Organizations will explore efforts and opportunities for the use of Earth observations for the benefit of humankind, focusing on GEO’s three priority areas: the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Paris Climate Agreement, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. More information and registration will be available here soon.

ERA-PLANET will participate in the EUROGEOSS Workshop which (formerly known as the European GEO Projects’ Workshop) will take place on 12-14 September 2018 at the University of Geneva and the Museum of Ethnography. The event is co-organised by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, the European Commission with the support of the University of Geneva.

The workshop brings together European players interested in and actively contributing to the Global Earth Observations System of Systems (GEOSS). The aim is to look for synergies among the participants and to discuss how Europe can contribute to this international effort.

For more information please visit the EUROGEOSS website (https://ec.europa.eu/easme/en/eurogeoss-workshop-2018)

In July, the GEOEssential Work Package 4 (WP4) members met in Frankfurt to discuss progress, establish collaborations, and define next steps to be taken. The event was organized by Aidin Niamir, Ricarda Prinz, Marta Gómez Giménez, and Thomas Hickler (BiK-F). This WP is based on five pillars: i) mapping the data landscape and data determination of EVs for Biodiversity and Ecosystems (led by CREAF); ii) species distribution and biodiversity indicators (led by GFZ); iii) ecosystem functioning and EBV indicators resilience (led by CNR), iv) strategies for supporting biodiversity policy needs (directed by MfN); v) development of input and evaluation data sets for process-based models (led by BiK-F); and vi) transfer of biodiversity and ecosystem essential variables and indicators to the GEOEssential Dashboard (driven by UNIGE).

In June, the SGN team of GEOEssential (Aidin Niamir and Marta Gómez Giménez) attended the workshop on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that Prof. Dr. Pedro Brancalion organized at the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo. A group of researchers and policy experts met to discuss the status of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on a global scale. In particular, we focused on the SDGs 6: clean water and sanitation, 14: life below water, and 15: life on land. The workshop aimed at analyzing how to report on areas with high potential for intervention to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The follow-up work will focus on defining hotspots based on the level of protection, threat, and importance of a certain area to achieve SDGs. This work could be used to outline a road map for prioritizing actions that pursue SDGs according to national environmental agendas.

The output of the workshop will be included in the reports of the Task 4.4 of the WP4.

http://www.geoessential.eu/workshop-on-sustainable-development-goals-19-21-june-2018-piracicaba-sao-paulo-brazil/

As part of its educational activities, SMURBS accepted the invitation and delivered a seminar on “Exploitation of Earth Observation and Novel Observational Platforms for Smart City Applications” at the Physics Department of the University of Athens on May 24, 2018.

The audience was comprised of students of the Master on Environmental Physics Programme and members of the faculty. The specialization of the audience provided a prime opportunity for SMURBS to present its approach of integrating EO and smart city methods, to delineate the state-of-the-art across the EO platforms’ chain, to which the students can be eventually part of, and finally to highlight the particularities of the urban landscape concerning environmental pressures, EO specifications and links to policy and the citizenry.

In the last part of the seminar, a Q&A session was triggered, and feedback was provided by the audience, in a lively manner, concerning its view on environmental pressures for the city of Athens and qualitative criteria a smart urban solution should uphold. Finally, the students, as potential participants in a Citizens’ Observatory, offered their opinion on what such an initiative should ensure: ease of interaction, integrated in other daily routines or smartphone applications and strong perception of impact.

http://smurbs.eu/exploitation-of-earth-observation-and-novel-observational-platforms-for-smart-city-applications/