The Liaison Office of GEO-CRADLE (encompassing coordinated actions by the Project Coordinator, the Liaison Officer and the Regional Coordinators), undertook the duty of triggering and facilitating the creation of national GEO focal points, in a number of countries from the consortium, but also within the extended RoI.
A number of countries was selected with respect to their maturity and the existing access to their decision making centers, exploiting in most of the cases the opportunities for liaising during the regional GEO-CRADLE workshops. Specific instructions for first steps to be undertaken were communicated via the Liaison Office (Greek GEO Office), covering the necessary steps for the establishment of a GEO Office. Indicatively, we refer to the following countries that this interaction reached a quite mature stage and the process is still ongoing: Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, Albania, Malta, Israel, UAE.
In November 2018, the first GEO Office in the RoI of GEO-CRADLE was established in Albania, as a result of the aforementioned activity of the project. The contact point has been designated at the State Authority for Geospatial Information (ASIG) by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs of Albania.
Currently, ASIG, with the assistance of GEO-CRADLE’s Liaison Office (Greek GEO Office), will inform accordingly the GEO Secretariat and will hopefully become an active member of the different GEO Boards, to follow closely the evolution of GEO and coordinate GEO relevant activities at the national level.
