Haris Kontoes GRSS GEO Principal, informed the Board about the interesting outcomes of the Technology, Industry and Education (TIE) session that he co-organised with Prof. Megan Lewis in IGARSS 2025, entitled “Advances and applications in Earth Observation for SDG. Accelerating Earth Intelligence in the context of GEO” on 6 August 2025 in Brisbane, Australia. This event brought together GRSS and GEO experts from industry, academia, and user communities, and discussed key synergies at regional and global level to address challenges in capacity building and development of solutions for accelerating applications in the global scale.
Haris Kontoes introduced GEO and Regional GEOs, Megan Lewis focused on the Australian perspectives in GEO, and Singh Sachindra presented the Digital Earth Pacific. Irena Hajnsek presented the Earth Observations for Sustainable Development Goals (EO4SDG) GEO Enabling Mechanism, and the role of GRSS Remote Sensing Environment, Analysis and Climate Technologies (REACT) Technical Committee (TC) in supporting it. Yifang Ban and Claudio Persello presented the Artificial Intelligence for Earth Observation (AI4EO) GEO Enabling Mechanism, and the synergies with GRSS Image Analysis and Data Fusion (IADF) Technical Committee (TC). Alexia Tsouni highlighted the GRSS contribution in Education and Capacity Building for GEO through the GEO-CRADLE GEO Enabling Mechanism, and Carlos Lopez Martinez focused on the GRSS Education portfolio in GEO, fostering AI4EO literacy and education for qualifying scientists in using EO.
Then, Haris Kontoes highlighted, in his capacity as EuroGEO Action Groups Coordinator, the upcoming EuroGEO Workshop which will take place on 13-15 October 2025 in The Hague, Netherlands. He emphasized the parallel sessions “European Contributions to GEO Focus Areas” on Day 1, and the parallel sessions “EuroGEO Action Group Recommendations for the EO Downstream Sector” on Day 2. He also underlined the parallel session “Regional engagement” on Day 1, co-organised by NOA/BEYOND and EC DG INTPA, with the participation of DGI Action, GEO Secretariat, and the GEO Enabling Mechanism GEO-CRADLE, a EuroGEO contribution to GEO, as well as the parallel session “Communication at the Heart of EuroGEO: Shaping a Connected and Collaborative EO Ecosystem” on Day 2, organised by NOA/BEYOND.
