Established in 2005, GEO (short for Group on Earth Observations) is a voluntary partnership of governments and organizations that envisions "a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information." GEO has 112 Member governments - 111 nations and the European Commission - 133 Participating Organizations comprised of international bodies with a mandate in Earth observations and 15 Associates: commercial and non-governmental, not-for-profit and civil society organizations. Together, the GEO community is creating a Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) that will link Earth observation resources world-wide across multiple Societal Benefit Areas - agriculture, biodiversity, climate, disasters, ecosystems, energy, health, water and weather - and make those resources available for better informed decision-making.
Belgium not only participates in GEO through the European Commission, but it is also a Member State itself. Its contribution is therefore twofold: on the one hand it participates in the Commission's Copernicus programme, which is a strong contribution to GEOSS, while on the other BELSPO has financed the development and maintenance of online platforms for accessing freely available EO data from PROBA-V, SPOT-VEGETATION and APEX (CvB Data Product Distribution Portal) and the Belgian Collaborative Ground Segment for Sentinel data (Terrascope).
Pieter Rottiers
Space Research & Applications
