Date: 21-24 June 2021
The theme of this year’s symposium is Strengthening inclusive partnerships across the GEO Work Programme (GWP). The aim of the Symposium is to share successful practices and identify ways to accelerate the delivery of products and solutions to address environmental and societal challenges. The symposium will be held from 21 to 24 June 2021.
Topics covered during the symposium include:
- EO solutions for the GEO Engagement Priorities including Climate Action, Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development, and Urban Resilience;
- EO solutions related to pandemic/epidemic planning, response, and recovery;
- Technologies and methods for enhancing discovery, access, analysis, and use of data and information, including analysis-ready data, data cubes, and data/knowledge platforms;
- Approaches for facilitating the equitable collection, sharing, and re-use of EO data, including consideration of data principles and ethics, in situ data, and emerging data sources such as citizen science; and
- GEO community development, including encouraging inclusivity, engagement with the commercial sector, resource mobilization, communications, and capacity development.
The Symposium will take the form of Plenary Sessions, Parallel Sessions and Spotlight Sessions. Plenary Sessions will be coordinated by the Symposium Subgroup, while Parallel Sessions and Spotlight Sessions are open for proposals. To encourage engagement across the entire GEO community and to allow speakers and audiences from all regions to participate, each day will begin at a different time.
Parallel Sessions: These sessions will be held in separate virtual meeting rooms, allowing for short, live presentations by speakers and facilitated discussions for more interactivity. Each session will last 1 hour. GEO Work Programme activities are encouraged to collaborate to propose sessions that address common issues or propose new integrated solutions. Geographic, gender, and generational diversity should be considered when selecting speakers and moderators for each session. To encourage engagement of the entire GEO community and to allow speakers and audiences from specific regions to participate, sessions can be scheduled at different times on different days (see Symposium Structure below).
Spotlight Sessions: These sessions are intended for individual GEO Work Programme activities, GEO Working Groups, or other GEO groups to present their progress, reach potential collaborators, or discuss future actions. They will be held simultaneously in a large virtual meeting space which will permit participants to move between individual SpotlightSessions. The platform allows for up to 15 visitors per session at a time. Each individual session should therefore be relatively short (about 15 – 30 minutes) but may be given more than once.