OGC Innovation Days Europe: Climate and Disaster Resilience, One Health, and Data Spaces

Connecting technology with policy to unlock impact on Climate and Disaster Resilience, One Health and Data Spaces.

View the agenda below.

Co-organized with FOSS4G Europe: 1-7 July, 2024.

In-person registration closes June 20, but is possible in-person during the event.

On-site attendance is highly recommended for full engagement, but free online observation is possible through GoToMeeting here.

OGC Innovation Days Europe aims to bridge between advanced digital collaborative solutions and practical applications for policymakers. The event is rolling out the international visions on how to realise digital transformation co-designed by software and data experts, environmental scientists and policy makers – fostering an enriching exchange of knowledge. Attendees will explore in-depth stakeholder needs and interact with the latest digital collaborative solutions.

Target audience and approach

If you are a policymaker, scientist, technical expert or stakeholder involved in geospatial technologies, public policy and/or disaster risk management, and are looking to deepen your expertise and impact in integrating data solutions for climate resilience, health and sustainability, this event is specially designed for you. While the event will be driven by high-level interventions, all on-site participants will be actively engaged in the discussions and their input will be integrated in the summary report.

The Agenda 2030 and Sustainable Development Goals as common language

OGC Innovation Days Europe provides a platform to discuss how current technical efforts can be combined effectively with the necessary governance and policy aspects. What decision processes do we need? What agreements are required for efficient decision processes or homogeneous reporting models for, for example, Climate Change or Land Degradation Neutrality? These discussions will underscore the alignment with Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which serve as guiding threads for the event. Specifically, attendees will explore how digital solutions and data management can help meet SDG targets, such as Climate Action (SDG 13) and Life on Land (SDG 15). By leveraging these frameworks, participants can identify actionable strategies to align their work with the global goals for sustainable development, thus enabling a cohesive, collaborative approach to bridging technology and policy.

Thematic focus: Climate and Disaster Resilience and One Health, and Data Spaces

Achieving climate and disaster resilience and sustainable development goals requires reliable location information on the environment, plants, animals, soil, land, and climate change impact among other disciplines. Generating this information dedicated to the users’ needs is challenging, and requires highly optimized spatial data infrastructures and climate resilience information systems. These systems should be integrated within clearly defined policy strategies and climate actions, propelled by efficient policy frameworks, ensuring that data pipelines and data spaces are interoperable and well-structured. This integration facilitates the effective use of analysis, visualization, and reporting tools, critical for informing and implementing climate strategies.

OGC Innovation Days Europe will foster a dialogue between technical experts, decision-makers, and policy experts. The focus will be on enhancing Climate & Disaster Resilience, advancing One Health initiatives, and exploring the challenges to optimise  European Common Data Spaces. The event will spotlight ongoing initiatives for modernized knowledge exchange and analysis environments to support these goals.

Climate and Disaster Resilience. This pillar will focus on enhancing resilience to climate-related hazards and natural disasters, closely aligned with the guiding principles of the UN climate policy frameworks related to Disaster Risk Reduction. It will discuss how innovative geospatial solutions can develop robust strategies that mitigate atmospheric pollution, adapt to the impacts of climate change and enhance disaster preparedness. Emphasizing a multi-hazard approach, the pillar calls for inclusive decision-making based on the open exchange of information and knowledge.

One Health. The One Health pillar will explore the interconnected health of people, animals, plants and their shared environment, emphasizing the critical role of climate change, loss of biodiversity and land degradation. It will highlight integrated approaches to health risks at the human-animal-ecosystem interface, discussing how the environment acts both as an enabler and an indicator of holistic health.

Data Spaces. Data Spaces are dedicated to advancing the architecture of digital data governance, focusing on the creation and management of interoperable data ecosystems. The pillar will introduce the need for streamlining data sharing and utilization across various sectors to support decision-making.

Each thematic area will directly align with Sustainable Development Goals, such as SDG 13 Climate Action, SDG14 Live below water, SDG 15 Life on Land, and others, ensuring that the discussions are grounded in the global agenda for sustainable development.

Agenda:

Monday 1st July, 2024

	Title	Speaker	Abstract
09:00-10:30	Opening Session		Future visions pushing transition.
	Europe’s vision on data sharing to push the green transition (30min + 15 Discussion)	Marco Minghini European Commission Joint Research Centre Directorate T. Digital Transformation and Data T.1 Digital Economy Unit	With the current European Commission (2019-2024), the EU has embarked on an ambitious pathway towards a twin green and digital transition. Interoperable, trustworthy and sovereign data sharing practices are at the foundation of this vision. The talk will explore the main milestones of this journey, highlight the main results achieved and present the ongoing work, which will continue under the next European Commission (2024-2029).
	Todays Innovation Tomorrows Technology (30min + 15 Discussion)	Marie-Francoise Voidrot Europe Director, Innovation Program | Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)	Opening the stage with a discussion led by OGC about how open standards, innovations in geospatial technologies, and location information is becoming more Findable Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR).
10:30-11:00	Break
11:00-12:30	Climate and Biodiversity		The challenge of organizing very heterogeneous data.
	Digital Empowerment in Agriculture: Fostering Climate Resilience and Restoration with Smart Solutions for Smallholder Farmers	Anton Eitzinger Thematic Leader, Digital Climate Action Alliance of Diversity International and CIAT The Americas Hub – Cali, Colombia	Digital technology has the potential to empower farmers by integrating them into information flow and data ecosystems. This not only enhances their autonomy with access to tailored agricultural advice and knowledge, but also tackles climate change and biodiversity loss through actionable resilience and restoration strategies. However, challenges for the ongoing digital transformation in agriculture remain for the near future, including limited connectivity in many areas, digital literacy issues, and the need for more farmer-centered designs and interoperability of digital innovations. We will showcase successful initiatives like digital climate advisory services in Africa and Latin America, a community-led digital platform for on-farm tree restoration MyFarmTrees, and Croppie as a AI-supported coffee yield estimation approach, among others.
	Data for nature conservation and restoration: new tools and opportunities.	Aveliina Helm Professor of Restoration Ecology, University of Tartu, Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences
12:30-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Climate and Disaster Resilience		Regulations, Recommendations, Good Practice Guidance, needs and barriers. How do the policy frames push towards sustainability and resilience?
	UN SDG 14.1.1b Plastic Debris in the Ocean: Understanding the Sources and Abundance through Remote Sensing	Samantha Lavender EO Scientist and Director Pixalytics Ltd	This SDG indicator focuses on floating plastic debris as a surrogate for the broader size distribution of plastics in the ocean, including microplastics. The floating plastic is difficult to detect as there are multiple sources of floating material, and it is often sub-pixel in size. Also, multiple input satellite data sources need to be combined to achieve a global view.
	From Typhoon activity forecast to large landslide early warning systems	Gérald Fenoy CEO at GeoLabs PostGis Zoo-Project	The nexus from typhoon activity related to heavy rain events leading to a high risk of large landslides will be rolled out in this intervention. The data pipeline in place following FAIR principles is required and interoperable application packages ensure a reliable transformation from raw data to information and knowledge. A Taiwanese use case will be shown on how emergency management systems can reduce disaster risks.
	30 min Discussion	Moderation: Marie-Françoise Voidrot
15:30-16:00	Break
16:00-17:30	Climate and Health		The bumpy road of data pipelines in the health domain. How are the medical and climate services linked?
	Climate Monitoring and Decision Support Framework for Sand Fly-borne Diseases Detection and Mitigation	Danyang Wang PhD Candidate in Wageningen University Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Group	Due to climate change, environmental conditions are spatially shifting risks of vector-borne disease transmission. This requires policy strategies and the implementation of special applications for dedicated information like early warning systems. Here we are discussing the use case of Climate Monitoring and Decision Support Framework for Sand Fly-borne Diseases Detection and Mitigation (CLIMOS-Project). The challenges and difficulties of merging data from different data sources for the data pipeline from raw data to information as well as the options for sustainable usage of the applications in free or commercial ways within the EU digital dataspaces.
	Geospatial modelling of vector-borne diseases: data challenges	Luigi Sedda Lancaster Medical School	Public health interventions for vector-borne diseases (but extendable to any disease) requires the identification of fine and accurate spatial and temporal risks scales. Ecological modelling can provide this information only if the geospatial data (outcome and predictors) are provided at a resolution coherent with the area heterogeneity (in terms of environmental conditions) and disease transmission.
	30 min Discussion	Moderation: Marie-Françoise Voidrot
18:00-20:00	Social Event		Vint Veinibaar & Tapas Ülikooli 7, 51003, Tartu. Fingerfood and a greeting drink provided.

Tuesday, 2 July, 2024

	Title	Speaker	Abstract
09:00-10:30	Spatial Data Infrastructures and Data Spaces		Technical Solutions – Are they answering the requirements?
	Location Europe – Linking National Spatial Data Infrastructures to EU Dataspaces	Antti Jakobsson Chief Engineer at Maanmittauslaitos	How national data infrastructures could be linked to European Data Spaces. Locationeurope.eu shows how this could be done. Location Innovation Hub host this platform supported by the European Core Data Provider network which is open for all national data providers.
	The Green Deal Data Space Journey	Nevena Raczko EU Projects Manager @ IDC Policy, Sustainability & Green Growth	This presentation will focus on the transformative potential of the Green Deal Data Space (GDDS) within the context of the European Union’s ambitious climate agenda. By harnessing the power of digital innovation and sustainable practices, the GDDS serves as a cornerstone in the EU’s journey towards climate neutrality by 2050. Through a comprehensive outline of its objectives, key components, and implementation strategy, attendees will explore how the GDDS fosters collaboration, empowers decision-making, and drives impactful action across sectors. The presentation navigates through the roadmap towards an operational GDDS, paving the way for a greener, more resilient future for Europe and beyond.
	30 min Discussion	Moderator: Mayte Toscano
10:30-11:00	Break
11:00-12:30	Tools, Gaps, and Challenges		Addressing the gaps between stakeholder requirements and technical solutions – Where do we need to find new or better recipes?
	Data Spaces Technical Building Blocks	Jari Reini National Land Survey of Finland, and ISO/TC211–AHG10	European Common Data Spaces will be based on International Data Space Association (IDS) building blocks. This session reveals technical building blocks and potential standards to be used for geospatially enabled European Data Spaces.
	DGGS for Climate Resilence planning	Alexander Kmoch Researcher Landscape Geoinformatics, University of Tartu, and OGC DGGS Europe co-chair	This session will discuss how Discrete Global Grid Systems (DGGS) can improve climate resilence planning and policy through better geospatial data handling. DGGS provides a uniform, scalable framework that can seamlessly integrate various data sources, improve interoperability, selective data sharing and reuse, mult-resolution (areal, gridded, tabluar) statistics and quick operational views alike a data warehouse. We will give an overview of the state of available technology and show examples on DGGS has been employed in climate adaptation, emergency and disaster management.
	30 min Discussion	Moderator: Mayte Toscano
12:30-14:00	Lunch
14:00-15:30	Climate Services		How can the current climate services be improved?
	New Climate Data Store (CDS)-Engine powering the Copernicus Health Hub	Angel Lopez Alos CDS Team Manager en European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts	CDS-Engine is a modern and versatile framework infrastructure fostered by FAIR principles powering Copernicus services (C3S,CAMS, CEMS), platforms (WEkEO, Climate Adapt) and innitiatives as the Thematic Hubs for Health and Energy.
	ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI) in support of the Paris Agreement and the Global Stocktake	Clement Albergel Climate Applications Scientist Climate and Long-Term Action Division European Space Agency – ESA	ESA’s Climate Change Initiative is a major research and development effort that generates global, decades-long satellite data records to track and understand key aspects of the Earth climate system, and known as Essential Climate Variables. The Programme enables a community of over 500 experts from across Europe to exploit the Earth observation archive and data from operating satellite missions to craft high-quality data products that strengthen scientific understanding climate and underpin the models and climate services used to inform support ESA Member States to take climate action and report progress towards the Paris Agreement goals. These data records support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to monitor, assess and address changes to Earth’s climate system.
	30 min Discussion	Moderator: Joana Simoes
15:30-16:00	Break
16:00-17:30	Climate and Land		Deep dive into the UN policy framework for land degradation neutrality, lesson learned and challenges.
	Digital infrastructures, tools and data standards for UNCCD national reporting on SDG 15.3.1	Brian O’Connor Programme Officer Geospatial Information Officer Science, Technology and Innovation Unit (Brian remote, Presented by Nils Hempelmann in person)	Five United Nations Convention Combat Desertification (UNCCD) strategic objectives underpin the 2018-2030 UNCCD Strategic Framework. Strategic objective 1 (SO 1) aims at improving the condition of affected ecosystems, combating desertification/land degradation, promoting sustainable land management and contributing to land degradation neutrality (LDN). SDG Indicator 15.3.1, and its three sub-indicators, form a monitoring framework for SO1. The four-year national reporting cycle of UNCCD gathers national data on SDG Indicator 15.3.1 and catalyses action on monitoring and reporting. In order to facilitate national reporting, the pipeline from raw data to infromation and knowlede requires standardisation and optimised infrastructures. The pointed out bottlenecks will be discussed.
	Quo vadis? Where to go?		Future priorities to enhance, improve and realize climate services.
	Panel Discussion	Evert Van Bever Marco Minghini Marie-Françoise Voidrot Stefanie Lumnitz Milvari Alieva	Moderation: PlanAdapt
	Closing Words	OGC

In-person registration closes June 20, but is possible in-person during the event.

This event is sponsored by OGC and the European Commission through the Horizon projects CLINT (GA-101003876), AD4GD (GA-101061001), USAGE (GA-101059950), Iliad (GA-101037643), EuroGEOSec (GA-101134335), CLIMOS (GA-101057690) and other projects of the Climate-Health Cluster.