Open-Earth-Monitor project

Meeting on development and sharing of open geodata
2023-01-18 09:45 - 17:00 (Europe/Paris) | ITC Auditorium, Hengelosestraat 99, Enschede, 7514 AE, Netherlands
Open geodata is the idea that certain geospatial and Earth Observation (EO) data should be freely available to everyone to use, re-use and redistribute without restrictions like copyright or patents, but with requirements such as attribution and share- alike. It is considered a best practice for modern geo-information and EO research in line with Open Science and FAIR principles. However, developing easily accessible (e.g. cloud-optimised) and re-usable (big) geospatial datasets, and sharing them “effectively” with the research community and other stakeholders is challenging and usually requires a team effort including researchers, research software engineers, technology advisors, and community managers.
Collaboration between research institutions to share technical and practical know-how on best practices, as well as lessons learned while developing and sharing open geodata, supports such efforts and helps in developing an open data culture for open research and development communities. The meeting on “Development and Sharing of Open Geodata” aims to initiate such a collaboration between ITC and OpenGeoHub, by bringing both institutions together to present state-of-the-art research activities with a focus on open geodata, discuss the needs and challenges, and pursue collaboration opportunities especially to produce joint datasets and software.
OpenGeoHub is an independent research foundation (a DeepTech organisation) with 20 staff, primarily data scientists and technical experts, located at the Agro Business Park in Wageningen. It focuses on promoting open data and open source software solutions to support regional and global projects, currently leads the Open Earth Monitor and Eco Data Cube, and is also involved in the Land Carbon Lab project led by WRI.
Live streaming will be available at https://www.itc.nl/live/ during the event.
Registration
Registration is required to attend the mini-symposium. For registration please fill-in the registration form.
Programme

9:45 – 9:55

Welcome and opening (Prof. Dr. Freek D. van der Meer, Dean ITC) (TBC)

9:55 – 10:20

OpenGeoHub
Presentation on OpenGeoHub Foundation and its open geodata activities (Dr. Tomislav Hengl, Director OpenGeoHub Foundation)
15 min presentation + 10 min Q&A

10:20 – 10:45

ITC and 4 Profiling Themes
Presentation on ITC and its 4 profiling themes (Prof. Dr. Karin Pfeffer, Portfolio Holder Research ITC)
15 min presentation + 10 min Q&A

10:45 – 11:00

Coffee break

11:00 – 12:30

Presentations of ITC and OpenGeoHub projects

Open Earth Monitor: a cyberinfrastructure bringing together key open-source developers in Europe (Dr Tomislav Hengl, OpenGeoHub)
EcoExtreML + WUNDER: Digital Twin of the soil-plant system (Dr Yijian Zeng, ITC-WRS)
EcoDataCube for Europe: combining spatiotemporal ML and open EO data cubes (Dr Leandro Parente, OpenGeoHub)
Towards a Global Multitemporal Data Set of Glacier Outlines using Deep Learning and Cloud Computing (Prof. Dr Claudio Persello, ITC-EOS)

15 min presentation + 5 min Q&A for each project.
10 min plenary Q&A.

12:30 – 13:30

Lunch

13:40 – 15:20

Presentations of ITC and OpenGeoHub projects

AI4SoilHealth: accelerating collection and use of soil health information using AI technology to support the Soil Deal for Europe and EU Soil Observatory (Dr. Ichsani Wheeler, OpenGeoHub)
Open geospatial data publication at ITC (Masoome Shariat, ITC-FB)

15 min presentation + 5 min Q&A for each project.
5 min plenary Q&A.

14:15 – 14:45

Plenary Discussion
Needs and Challenges of Developing and Sharing Open Geospatial Datasets

14:45 – 15:00

Coffee break

15:00 – 16:00

PhD’s in the Spotlight
Lightning presentations of PhD candidates with a focus on datasets that will be developed during their studies.

Space-time modeling of vegetation in a changing environment (Carmelo Bonannella, OpenGeoHub)
Big and Useful Maps: Land use / land cover classification with high thematic depth (Martijn Witjes, OpenGeoHub)
Mapping land potential / tracking land degradation using EO data (Julia Hackländer, OpenGeoHub)
Building soil indicator data cubes using pan-EU soil databases (Xuemeng Tian, OpenGeoHub)
TBD (ITC)
TBD (ITC)
TBD (ITC)
TBD (ITC)

5 min presentation + 2 min Q&A for each PhD candidate.
5 min plenary Q&A

16:00 – 17:00

Drinks

Present and Future of Data Cubes discussion forum
2022-12-07 11:15 - 13:00 (Europe/Athens) | Eventbrite
Critical environmental information is today heavily under-used because it requires a high level of expertise and computing capacity. EO data is not yet a commodity and neither is environmental information.
How can we make monitoring systems that explain the effects of global warming on land cover changes and extreme weather (floods, droughts etc.) as simple to use and as popular as Google Maps or AccuWeather?
What have we learned so far from NASA’s MODIS, Google Earth Engine, Copernicus initiatives, and OpenEO.cloud?
In this live-streamed event organized by HorizonEurope’s Open-Earth-Monitor project and OpenGeoHub, international experts and project partners will discuss how we can make environmental data derived from Earth Observations and field monitoring more usable, accessible and relevant to decision-makers and society.
REGISTER HERE!
Starting from the discussion of existing top-level solutions for the effective use of large EO data for real-world applications, we will explore open-source solutions that can process massive volumes of EO data in a more transparent and reproducible way.
On top of public services, commercial solutions can play a massive role: we will analyze and discuss existing commercial Data Cube services covering the whole of Europe and the whole world to understand what the best way to use them is for open, European projects.
Finally, the forum will give stage also to more in-depth discussions around cloud-optimized data formats and their applicability to store and share gridded, vector and tabular data.
Speakers will be soon announced!
About the EuroGeo Workshop 2022 in Athens
This event will take place within the EuroGEO workshop 2022 ‘Towards an integrated and convergent EuroGEO’ on 7 – 9 December 2022, in Athens, Greece.
EuroGEO combines the contributions of European members of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a partnership of more than 100 national governments, over 100 participating organisations and the European Commission. GEO envisions a future where decisions and measures for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations.
The annual workshop brings together European players interested in and actively contributing to EuroGEO.
This year, the workshop is organised by the European Commission, the General Secretariat for Research and Innovation of the Hellenic Ministry of Development and Investments, and the Greek GEO Office operating within the National Observatory of Athens.
REGISTER HERE!

Seminar Digital Twins for Earth Sciences: How to prepare your infrastructure?
2022-11-21 11:00 - 16:30 (Europe/Paris) | SURF office, Utrecht, Moreelsepark 48, Utrecht, 3511 EP
This seminar brings together interested parties to discuss these questions and build the collaborations needed to prepare the Dutch research community for DestinE.
Destination Earth is a major European program to build Digital Twins of Earth for a sustainable future. It will deliver huge data amounts to support research and policies. This seminar introduces the concept of Digital Earth Twins and we discuss together how the Dutch research community can prepare their infrastructure to make full use of the data.
Through the unprecedented observation and simulation capabilities of DestinE, empowered by new digital infrastructure (incl. EuroHPC Exascale systems) and AI capacity, we will be better prepared to respond to major natural disasters, adapt to climate change and predict the socioeconomic impact. DestinE supports the European Commission’s Green Deal action and Digital Strategy.
The amount of data available for Earth Sciences research is ever-growing. DestinE, on the one hand, will incorporate cutting-edge models and real-time measurements but, on the other hand, also generate huge amounts of new data. How can researchers ensure that they are ready to process and analyse this data for innovative research? Which infrastructures are already available and what is lacking?
For whom
Researchers, Program managers, IT support, Data scientists
Organization
This seminar is organised by SURF in cooperation with the Netherlands Space Office (NSO).
Program

Time
Subject

10.30
Walk in

11.00
Ron Augustus (SURF)
Welcome at SURF

11.10
Wilco Hazeleger (UU)
Keynote

11.45
Raymond Sluiter (NSO)
Destination Earth & Earth Observation Infrastructures

12.10
Femke Vossepoel (TUD)
Digital Twins for safe and sustainable Delta development in a changing Climate

12.35
Lunch

13.35
Gennadii Donchyts (Google)
Google Earth Engine

14.00
Haili Hu, Raymond Oonk (SURF)
Working together with SURF for Earth Sciences

14.10
Break out session / Futuring

15.10
Break

15.30
Tomislav Hengl (OpenGeoHub)
Decentralized computing infrastructures and open source cloud-solutions for Digital Earth Twin systems (or how to scale up a proven idea within a modest computing budget)

15.55
Keynote:
Thomas Geenen (ECMWF)

16.30 – 17.30
Closing and drinks

SURF is a cooperative association of Dutch educational and research institutions in which the members combine their strengths. Within SURF, we work together to acquire or develop the best possible digital services, and to encourage knowledge sharing through continuous innovation. The members are the owners of SURF.
Official event
Register here

Innovative governance, environmental observations and digital solutions in support of the EU Green Deal
2022-07-19 08:30 - 18:00 (Europe/Paris) | Forum Building, Droevendaalsesteeg 2, Wageningen, 6708 PB, Netherlands
Open-Earth-Monitor is a Horizon Europe project gathering a consortium of 23 organizations across Europe and beyond, starting on June 1st. The mission of the Open-Earth-Monitor project consortium is to significantly accelerate the uptake of environmental information to guide current and future users in research, decision-making and citizens toward the most sustainable solutions.
The consortium invites you to follow the launch event through a high-quality live-stream service from anywhere in the world & get to know the future activities, outputs and outstanding researchers part of the Open-Earth-Monitor project.
Deadline for registration: 1 June 2022
Programme
(CEST – Amsterdam)
Block 1 (09:00 – 09:35)
Introduction to the project: what is the OEM cyberinfrastructure project? by Tomislav Hengl (OpenGeoHub)
Block 2 (09:35 – 09:50)
Enabling bottom-up governance of environmental data by Ichsani Wheeler (OpenGeoHub)
Block 3 (09:50 – 10:10)
Anchoring Open-Earth-Monitor to the twin transition by Jean Dusart (Project Officer at European Commission DG Research & Innovation)
Block 4 (10:10 – 10:30)
EuroGEO related project portfolio by Erwin Goor (Project Officer, Environmental observation at European Commission – European Research Executive Agency)
Coffee Break (10:30 – 11:00)
Block 5 (11:00 – 11:30)
Earth Observation Land Data & Services beyond 2022 by Joanna Ruiter (Netherlands Space Office)
Block 6 (11:30 – 12:00)
EO Platforms and open science in support of Green Deal ambitions by Patrick Griffiths (European Space Agency)
Block 7 (12:00 – 12:30)
Data and governance gaps in the context of achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (SDG Target 15.3) by Barron Joseph Orr (Lead Scientist, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification)
Lunch & Interactive Demos (12:30 – 13:30)
Block 8 (12:00 – 12:30)
Better connecting the European groundbased forest inventories with EO data; 27 years experiences with gathering ground based data by Gert-Jan Nabuurs (Wageningen University and Research)
Block 9 (14:00 – 14:30)
Open knowledge to bridge the digital divide by Yana Gevorgyan (Geo Secretariat)
Block 10 (14:30 – 15:00)
Mapping Land Use and Land Cover: The Challenges of Going Glocal by Gilberto Camara (Senior Researcher, National Institute for Space Research, Brazil)
Coffee Break (15:00 – 15:30)
Block 11 (15:30 – 16:00)
Need for environmental observation data: working with the private sector and investors by Dagmar Mooij (IDH-The Sustainable Trade Initiative)
Block 12 (16:00 – 16:30)
Global land cover and land use monitoring by Matt Hansen (Co-director at Global Land Analysis and Discovery)
Block 13 (16:30 – 17:00)
EO4EU: AI-augmented ecosystem for EO data accessibility with XR User Interfaces for Service and Data Exploitation by Stathes P. Hadjiefthymiades (Dept. of Informatics & Telecommunications, University of Athens, EO4EU project)

Block 14 (17:00 – 17:30)

Discussion forum “How can EO and AI help deliver green new deal/ what could be the most cost-effective path — the win-win-win?” with all keynote speakers

Happy Hour (17:30 – 18:00)

Registration deadline Open-Earth-Monitor Launch Event
2022-06-01 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Paris)
