On 22-26 November 2021, just a week after and in the aftermath of the conclusions of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) on Climate Change, the GEO Community met to collectively decide on its next step.
During the virtual GEO Week 2021, a number of plenary, anchor and side events, youth and industry tracks were organized, to bring together global EO players and stakeholder to analyse current status and adjust GEO’s strategies to the new trends for the next programmatic period. Details on the programme and material from all events can be found here.
During the Geo Week 2021, the Greek GEO Office (GGO) played very active role by moderating, presenting or being a panelist in several events. In particular:
- The Director of GGO Dr. Evangelos Gerasopoulos served as the moderator of Plenary Session 3: Engaging the GEO Community. This key session was devoted on the science-policy interface by engaging various stakeholders including policymakers and users in the GEO Community. You can watch the full session here.
A new chapter for GEO was initiated at the end of the session, with the proposal of a fourth engagement priority on “Resilient Cities and Human Settlements”, a new policy mandate under the New Urban Agenda. Guest speaker was Lenio Myrivili, the Chief Heat Officer of Athens city, who introduced rising challenges in the urban environment (her intervention is available here).
Evangelos Gerasopoulos followed by digging further into GEO’s strategy on addressing the new engagement priority (see here) and directed the decision back to GEO’s Plenary which unanimously approved the fourth engagement priority. During the last two years GGO has played catalytic role in preparing for the maturation of this new policy frame in GEO.
- Following to Plenary Session 3, and devoted exactly on this new topic where GEO’s efforts will be intensified, Anchor Session Four on Resilient Cities and Human Settlements took place, where invited speaker leads from cities and human settlements working on sustainable urbanization provided state-of-the-art examples on how EO can be exploited in their workflows and decision making. Dr. Gerasopoulos took part in the interesting panel discussion that followed. You can watch the full session here.
During the Side Event, later on the same day, on "Using the EO Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements to Support Equitable Development and Climate Resilience, Orestis Speyer, the GGO Head of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Group, moderated the discussion on scaling up Earth Observation - based solutins included in the EO Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements, bringing together governments, private sector, academia, funders, and practitioners working in the areas of human settlements, sustainability and climate resilience. You can watch the full session here.
- Next, the eShape flagship project of EuroGEO organized the Side Event on “Contributions from e-shape to the GEO Work Programme”, during which Dr. Gerasopoulos presented e-shape’s current and potential contributions to the new, fourth engagement priority of GEO on urban resilience.