From: Jacobs Tim [mailto:tim.jacobs@vito.be] Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:06 PM To: BEROUD Florence (RTD) Cc: EDWARDS Alan (RTD) Subject: RE: Due Dec 15: Call for nominating STC Showcase Examples Dear Florence, Thanks for the clarification. After a second thought, I agree to stick with pushing DevCoCast for the Capacity Building exhibit (Pavilion) and/or showcase, as was proposed at Istanbul. I do have some ideas for the STC showcasing. The proposal form seems to ask for mature ideas (with established partner contributions,...), so I'd prefer just passing them by e-mail. 1) One thought is that for the Pavilion exhibit for instance, we wanted to show end-to-end chains (ie food supply), showing where GEO & EO can bring benefits. For the STC, I'd propose to rather look at the multi-disciplinarity & cross-cutting nature of GEOSS. Integration & interoperability (incl scientific quality) of the products being shared through GEOSS are important issues. A few recent, African examples: - In Botswana, vegetation conditions are monitored and reported at Ministerial levels. Through EUMETCast, they now receive up-to-date vegetation data, which in combination with burn scar & soil data they already had, allowed them to cut back fieldwork time (thus saving costs). And they are now even able to provide more comprehensive reports and at 10-day intervals rather than monthly to their minister... This showed nicely how different data sources are combined in practice in Africa and how EUMETCast / GEONETCast had a positive impact (costs + decision making). => I can send you some images/slides on this on Friday if you want. (I'm out of office right now). - In a recent report, my colleagues combined vegetation, water body & rainfall data (all routinely available on EUMETCast), to assess the agriculture of south Sudan (as part of an early warning service, so early in the growing season). If we would add other GEOSS data sources, and perhaps some burnt area / locust data, we could have a nice example of data integration/analysis. - Of course, similar showcases using DevCoCast data can be developed as well. For this, I am wondering if it would not be worth it to wait for the GEO CFP results (DevCoCast partners agreed to write a Type III proposal). Kind regards, Tim