The GEO BON community was largely represented at the GEO Week and 14th GEO Plenary, held in Washington DC, USA, from October 23rd to 26th.
The GEO BON Secretariat participated in a series of side events on the “European Environmental Research Infrastructure Community as sustainable in-situ contribution”, “The role of Citizen Observatories and Crowdsourcing Community in GEOSS”, and the “GEO Health Community of Practice Meeting”.
The Freshwater BON was also present at the GEO GLOWS side-event, on “GEOGLOWS and the harmonization of GEO Water Activities”, while the MBON organized a side-event on “Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) products to support Sustainable Development Goals”, which was also the occasion to do a live-demo of the MBON interactive tools (Data explorer and Infographics).
The GEO Secretariat also presented the 2016-2017 highlights (“Insights for a changing world”) to the Plenary, including GEO BON’s contribution to “coordinating observing systems”. http://www.earthobservations.org/documents/geo_xiv/GEO 20Highlights 202016-2017.pdf
Finally, Gilberto Câmara was appointed as the next GEO Secretariat Director, effective 1 July 2018. He is a leading researcher in Geoinformatics, Geographical Information Science, and Land Use Change with Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). He has been recognised internationally for promoting free access and open source software for Earth observation data.
For more information on the GEO Week and Plenary: http://www.earthobservations.org/documents.php?smid=3800
You can also directly access the video of some of the side events here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCOcU8-SEsU0v4Gc_sGcLQhdytIFBBnts
And the photo gallery of the GEO Week and Plenary here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grouponearthobservations/albums/