SAEON participates in Eye On Earth Summit working group

SAEON Systems Engineer Wim Hugo is a co-author of the Eye on Earth Summit White Paper.

The Eye on Earth Summit sponsored by Abu Dhabi and scheduled for 12-15 December 2011, will address issues related to missing, inaccessible or hidden data.

This sometimes has serious consequences, and the Eye on Earth Summit will bring policymakers and specialists together to define the key responses to these issues.

SAEON Systems Engineer Wim Hugo recently participated in one of the preparatory working groups, hosted at the Joint Research Council of the European Union at Ispra, Italy, together with 15 other delegates to finalise and publish the White Papers to be launched at the summit. Together with Charles Ziegler of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Stefan Jensen of the European Environmental Agency, T. Suha Ulgen of the United Nations, and Harlan Onsrud of the University of Maine, Wim is a co-author of the White Paper on ‘Integration of Crowdsourced Data with Environmental Information Systems’.

Other White Papers developed by the group cover the topics of scalable networks for environmental data and services sharing, constructing knowledge networks, and the impacts of mainstream IT on future environmental information systems.

Massive importance of mobile telephony

One of the most important informal conclusions from the discussion is the massive importance of mobile telephony for future environmental information systems. Africa has now overtaken Europe in the number of operational mobile phone accounts, and it is foreseen that mobile communications will play an ever-increasing role in engaging the scientists and citizens of developing countries with mainstream environmental systems.